About this Document............................................2
What is NetBSD?................................................2
Changes Between The NetBSD 3.0 and 4.0 Releases................3
Networking..................................................3
File systems................................................4
Drivers.....................................................4
Platforms...................................................6
Kernel subsystems...........................................7
Security....................................................8
Userland....................................................8
Components removed from NetBSD.............................10
The Future of NetBSD..........................................10
Sources of NetBSD.............................................11
NetBSD 4.0 Release Contents...................................11
NetBSD/alpha subdirectory structure........................12
Bootable installation/upgrade floppies.....................13
Binary distribution sets...................................13
NetBSD/alpha System Requirements and Supported Devices........15
Supported PCI bus devices..................................15
Supported ISA bus devices..................................16
Supported EISA bus devices.................................16
Supported Turbochannel bus devices.........................16
Getting the NetBSD System on to Useful Media..................17
Preparing your System for NetBSD installation.................20
Installing the NetBSD System..................................20
Running the sysinst installation program...................23
Introduction............................................23
Possible hardware problems..............................24
General.................................................24
Quick install...........................................24
Booting NetBSD..........................................25
Network configuration...................................26
Installation drive selection and parameters.............26
Partitioning the disk...................................26
Preparing your hard disk................................27
Getting the distribution sets...........................27
Installation using ftp..................................27
Installation using NFS..................................27
Installation from CD-ROM................................28
Installation from an unmounted file system..............28
Installation from a local directory.....................28
Extracting the distribution sets........................28
Finalizing your installation............................28
Manual and script-assisted installation....................29
Post installation steps.......................................32
Upgrading a previously-installed NetBSD System................35
Compatibility Issues With Previous NetBSD Releases............35
Issues affecting an upgrade from NetBSD 2.1 and older......36
Issues affecting an upgrade from NetBSD 3.x releases.......36
Issues with GDB 6.5...........................................37
Using online NetBSD documentation.............................37
Administrivia.................................................38
Thanks go to..................................................38
We are........................................................39
Dedication....................................................45
Legal Mumbo-Jumbo.............................................45
The End.......................................................51
This document describes the installation procedure for
NetBSD
4.0 on the
alpha
platform.
It is available in four different formats titled
INSTALL.ext,
where
.ext
is one of
.ps, .html, .more,
or .txt:
.ps.html.moremore(1)
and
less(1)
pager utility programs.
This is the format in which the on-line
man
pages are generally presented.
.txtYou are reading the HTML version.
The NetBSD Operating System is a fully functional Open Source UNIX-like operating system derived from the University of California, Berkeley Networking Release 2 (Net/2), 4.4BSD-Lite, and 4.4BSD-Lite2 sources. NetBSD runs on fifty four different system architectures (ports), featuring seventeen machine architectures across fifteen distinct CPU families, and is being ported to more. The NetBSD 4.0 release contains complete binary releases for many different system architectures. (A few ports are not fully supported at this time and are thus not part of the binary distribution. Please see the NetBSD web site at http://www.NetBSD.org/ for information on them.)
NetBSD is a completely integrated system. In addition to its highly portable, high performance kernel, NetBSD features a complete set of user utilities, compilers for several languages, the X Window System, firewall software and numerous other tools, all accompanied by full source code.
NetBSD is a creation of the members of the Internet community. Without the unique cooperation and coordination the net makes possible, it's likely that NetBSD wouldn't exist.
The NetBSD 4.0 release provides numerous significant functional enhancements, including support for many new devices, integration of hundreds of bug fixes, new and updated kernel subsystems, and many user-land enhancements. The result of these improvements is a stable operating system fit for production use that rivals most commercially available systems.
It is impossible to completely summarize more than a year of development that went into the NetBSD 4.0 release. The complete list of changes can be found in the CHANGES: ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-4.0/CHANGES and CHANGES-4.0: ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-4.0/CHANGES-4.0 files in the top level directory of the NetBSD 4.0 release tree. Some highlights include:
agr(4):
new pseudo-device driver for link level aggregation.
gre(4)
tunnels and the
tun(4)
device.
ndiscvt(8).
options(4)
and
in_getifa(9).
wpa_supplicant(8)
and
wpa_cli(8).
Utilities to connect and handle aspects of 802.11 WPA networks.
hostapd(8).
An authenticator for IEEE 802.11 networks.
carp(4):
imported Common Address Redundancy Protocol to allow multiple hosts to share a set of IP addresses for high availability / redundancy, from OpenBSD.
etherip(4):
new EtherIP tunneling device. It's able to tunnel Ethernet traffic over IPv4 and IPv6 using the EtherIP protocol specified in RFC 3378.
ftpd(8)
can now run in standalone mode, instead of from
inetd(8).
tftp(1)
now has support for multicast TFTP operation in open-loop mode, server is in progress.
tcp(4):
added support for RFC 3465 Appropriate Byte Counting (ABC) and Explicit Congestion Notification as defined in RFC 3168.
scan_ffs(8),
scan_lfs(8):
utilities to find FFSv1/v2 and LFS partitions to recover lost disklabels on disks and image files.
mount_tmpfs(8).
mount_udf(8).
Read-only for now.
vnd(4):
the vnode disk driver can be used on filesystems such as smbfs and tmpfs.
newfs_sysvbfs(8)
and
mount_sysvbfs(8).
auich(4):
added support to handle the AC'97 modem as audio device, enabled with the kernel option
``AUICH_ATTACH_MODEM''
azalia(4):
added support for S/PDIF.
amdpm(4):
added support for the i2c bus on the AMD-8111 used on many Opteron motherboards and for the Analog Devices ADT7464 hardware monitor chip.
adt7467c(4):
new driver for Analog Devices ADT7467 and ADM1030 hardware monitor chips.
ipmi(4):
new driver for motherboards implementing the Intelligent Platform Management Interface 1.5 or 2.0, from OpenBSD.
it(4):
new driver for iTE 8705F/8712F and SiS 950 hardware monitors.
lm(4)
driver was rewritten and support for more chips was added, for example for Winbond W83627HF, W83627THF, W83627DHG and Asus AS99127F.
owtemp(4):
new driver for the 1-Wire temperature sensors.
tmp121temp(4):
new driver for the Texas Instruments TMP121 temperature sensor.
ug(4):
new driver for Abit uGuru hardware monitor found on newer Abit motherboards.
geodewdog(4):
new AMD Geode SC1100 Watchdog Timer driver.
gscpcib(4):
new AMD Geode SC1100 PCI-ISA bridge that provides support for the GPIO interface.
ath(4):
updated HALs with support for WiSOC (AR531x) and 32bit SPARC.
bge(4):
added support for the following chips: BCM5753, BCM5753M, BCM5715, BCM5754, BCM5755 and BCM5787. Numerous improvements and bugfixes were made too.
kse(4):
new driver for Micrel KSZ8842/8841 PCI network cards.
msk(4):
new driver for Marvell Yukon 2 GigE PCI network cards, from OpenBSD.
nfe(4):
new driver for NVIDIA nForce Ethernet network cards, from OpenBSD.
ral(4):
new 802.11 driver for PCI/Cardbus Ralink RT2500, RT2501, RT2600, RT2661 and RT2500 USB chipsets, from OpenBSD.
rum(4):
new 802.11 driver for USB Ralink RT2501 and RT2601 chipsets, from OpenBSD.
sip(4):
now works on sparc64.
tlp(4):
added support for ASIX AX88140A and AX88141.
vr(4):
added support for the VIA Rhine III.
wm(4):
added support for i8003, ICH8, ICH9 and others. Support for IPv6 Rx TCP/UDP Checksum Offloading and more.
wpi(4):
new driver for Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG PCI 802.11 network cards, from OpenBSD.
glxsb(4):
new driver for the AMD Geode LX AES Security Block that provides random numbers and AES acceleration, from OpenBSD.
options(4)
for more information.
options(4)
for more information.
ahcisata(4):
new driver for AHCI 1.0 and 1.1 compliant SATA controllers.
ataraid(4):
added support to handle Adaptec HostRAID and VIA V-Tech software RAID.
ciss(4):
new driver for HP/Compaq 5th+ generation Smart ARRAY controllers, from OpenBSD.
fdc(4):
added support for SBus based sparc64 machines and fixed formatting on sparc.
gcscide(4):
new driver for the AMD Geode CS5535 Companion Device IDE controller.
jmide(4):
new driver for JMicron Technology JMB36x PCIe to SATA II/PATA controllers.
mfi(4):
new driver for LSI Logic and Dell MegaRAID SAS controllers, from OpenBSD.
mpt(4):
added support for newer SAS and similar devices.
njata(4):
new driver for Workbit NinjaATA-32 CardBus IDE controller.
pdcsata(4):
added support for the Promise PDC20775, PDC20771, PDC40518, PDC40718 and some bugfixes.
piixide(4):
added support for some ICH8/ICH8-M/ICH9 IDE and SATA controllers.
svwsata(4):
new driver for Serverworks K2 SATA controllers, from OpenBSD.
viaide(4)
added support for the VIA VT8237A SATA controller and AMD CS5536 Companion Device IDE Controller.
ucycom(4):
new driver for Cypress microcontroller based serial devices.
uipaq(4):
new driver for the iPAQ devices.
uslsa(4):
new driver for Silicon Labs CP210x series serial adapters.
utoppy(4):
new driver for the Topfield TF5000PVR range of digital video recorders.
vesafb(4):
added new framebuffer driver that supports VESA BIOS (VBE) 2.0 extensions and up.
teliosio(4)
driver for the Sharp Telios LCD screen and Battery unit.
midi(4)
framework got a complete overhaul for better support of Active Sensing and improved handling of tempo and timebase changes.
ubt(4)
for USB controllers, and
bt3c(4)
for the 3Com Bluetooth PC-Card.
See
bluetooth(4),
bthset(1)
and
btpin(1).
bio(4)
framework from OpenBSD, to query/control block hardware RAID device controllers. Currently supporting the
mfi(4)
driver.
dkctl(8)
can be used to switch buffer queuing strategies on the fly on
wd(4)
disks, see also
bufq(9).
fileassoc(9)
is used by Veriexec, it adds in-kernel and file-system independent file meta-data association interface.
firmload(9):
an API for loading firmware images used by various hardware devices.
gpio(4):
imported General Purpose I/O framework from OpenBSD.
onewire(4):
imported Dallas Semiconductor 1-wire bus framework from OpenBSD.
proplib(3)
protocol was added for sending property lists to/from the kernel using ioctls.
spi(4):
new SPI (Serial Peripherial Interface) framework.
timecounter(9)
adds a new time-keeping infrastructure along with NTP API 4 nanokernel implementation. Almost all platforms were changed to support this API.
wscons(4)
console driver supports splash screens, scrolling, progress bar for kernel and boot messages.
Kernel interfaces have continued to be refined, and more subsystems and device drivers are shared among the different ports. You can look for this trend to continue.
fast_ipsec(4)
for more information.
mprotect(2)
got restrictions to enforce W^X policies, from PaX. See
options(4),
sysctl(3),
and
paxctl(1).
security(8).
kauth(9)
was added, replacing the traditional BSD credential management and privileged operation access control with an abstract layer, allowing the implementation of various security models either as part of the NetBSD distribution or as third-party LKMs.
NetBSD's kernel authorization is a hybrid clean-room implementation of a similar interface developed by Apple, extending its capabilities and combining concepts of credential inheritance control.
cdplay(1):
added digital transfer mode support.
cksum(1)
can now verify checksums.
csplit(1):
new utility that splits a file into pieces. From FreeBSD/OpenBSD.
identd(1):
added support for forwarding ident queries and receiving of proxied ident queries.
getent(1):
added support for the ethers database.
gkermit(1):
new program for transferring files using the Kermit protocol.
mail(1):
added support for Mime and multi-character set handling, command line editing and completion.
utoppya(1):
new utility to interface to the
utoppy(4)
driver.
init(8):
added support for running multi-user in a chroot() environment. Allows / file system on e.g.,
cgd(4),
vnd(4)
or
ccd(4)
volumes.
gpt(8):
new GUID partition table maintenance utility, from FreeBSD.
iscsi-target(8);
Initiator (client) code is underway.
lockstat(8):
new command to display a summary of kernel locking events recorded over the lifetime of a called program.
ofctl(8):
new command to display the OpenPROM or OpenFirmware device tree for the macppc, shark and sparc64.
btconfig(8)
for controller configuration.
btdevctl(8)
to manage pseudo devices relating to remote services.
bthcid(8)
and
btpin(1)
for authenticating radio connections.
sdpd(8)
for providing service discovery to remote devices.
sdpquery(1)
for querying services on remote devices.
rfcomm_sppd(1)
to access remote services over RFCOMM via stdio or pty.
bthset(1)
for making connections to Bluetooth headsets.
Besides this list, there have also been innumerable bug fixes and other miscellaneous enhancements of course.
In this release of NetBSD, some software components known from previous releases were removed from the system. In some cases those were components that are not useful anymore or their utility does not justify maintenance overhead. Other components were not working properly and there was lack of interest in fixing them.
raid(4),
raidctl(8),
and the
NetBSD Guide:
http://www.NetBSD.org/docs/guide/en/chap-rf.html.
sendmail(1)
command line tool. Postfix has been included with NetBSD since NetBSD 1.5 was released in December 2005. Details about Postfix can be found in the
NetBSD Guide:
http://www.NetBSD.org/docs/guide/en/chap-mail.html.
For those who need Sendmail, it is available from pkgsrc in the
mail/sendmail
and
mail/sendmail813
packages.
net/uucp
package. The
cu(1)
command is available as a frontend to
tip(1).
lang/gcc3-f77
package.
The NetBSD Foundation has been incorporated as a non-profit organization. Its purpose is to encourage, foster and promote the free exchange of computer software, namely the NetBSD Operating System. The foundation will allow for many things to be handled more smoothly than could be done with our previous informal organization. In particular, it provides the framework to deal with other parties that wish to become involved in the NetBSD Project.
The NetBSD Foundation will help improve the quality of NetBSD by:
We hope to support even more hardware in the future, and we have a rather large number of other ideas about what can be done to improve NetBSD.
We intend to continue our current practice of making the NetBSD-current development source available on a daily basis.
We intend to integrate free, positive changes from whatever sources submit them, providing that they are well thought-out and increase the usability of the system.
Above all, we hope to create a stable and accessible system, and to be
responsive to the needs and desires of
NetBSD
users, because it is for
and because of them that
NetBSD
exists.
Refer to
http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/.
The root directory of the NetBSD 4.0 release is organized as follows:
.../NetBSD-4.0/
CHANGESCHANGES-4.0CHANGES.prevLAST_MINUTEMIRRORSREADME.filesTODOpatches/source/In addition to the files and directories listed above, there is one directory per architecture, for each of the architectures for which NetBSD 4.0 has a binary distribution.
The source distribution sets can be found in subdirectories of the
source
subdirectory of the distribution tree.
They contain the complete sources to the system.
The source distribution sets are as follows:
config(1);
and
dbsym(8).
All the above source sets are located in the
source/sets
subdirectory of the distribution tree.
The source sets are distributed as compressed tar files.
Except for the
pkgsrc
set, which is traditionally unpacked into
/usr/pkgsrc,
all sets may be unpacked into
/usr/src
with the command:
# cd / ; tar -zxpf set_name.tgz
In each of the source distribution set directories, there are files which contain the checksums of the files in the directory:
BSDSUMCKSUMMD5SHA512SYSVSUMThe SHA512 digest is the safest checksum, followed by the MD5 digest, and finally the POSIX checksum. The other two checksums are provided only to ensure that the widest possible range of systems can check the integrity of the release files.
alpha
subdirectory of the distribution:
.../NetBSD-4.0/alpha/.
It contains the following files and directories:
INSTALL.htmlINSTALL.psINSTALL.txtINSTALL.more.more
file contains underlined text using the
more(1)
conventions for indicating italic and bold display.
binary/kernel/netbsd-GENERIC.gzsets/installation/floppy/diskimage/tapeimage/cdhdtape
is included for the case where the installer is written to
a CD, hard drive, or tape.
This image file is the same for the CD, HD, and tape cases, but a separate
tapeimage/
directory exists to hold a copy of the
README
file and to meet the
NetBSD
release(7)
standard.
instkernel/netbsd.gz
installation kernel; this is the same installer kernel as in all the
other install
images, but without the various boot program and file system wrappers.
It can be netbooted or diskbooted from a previous installation.
no need to
gunzip
this image.
misc/GENERIC.fs,
a
GENERIC
kernel in a bootable file system image.
This is used in some unusual installations as described in the next section.
There are three bootable images in the
NetBSD
alpha distribution.
One is for a dual-floppy boot and is split into two separate files.
The other is a single-file image containing the same install kernel,
but intended to be written to a CD, tape, or hard drive.
The third image is a
GENERIC
kernel intended for production use in unusual cases.
This can be useful at some sites when:
siop(4)
or
isp(4)
SCSI devices, and on most platforms will not
boot from an IDE drive.
NetBSD
will happily operate
with almost any SCSI root or an IDE root; the solution here is to netboot
a kernel or always boot from floppy.
alpha/binary/sets
subdirectory
of the
NetBSD
4.0
distribution tree, and are as follows:
/usr/include)
and the various system libraries (except the shared
libraries, which are included as part of the
base
set).
This set also includes the manual pages for
all of the utilities it contains, as well as the
system call and library manual pages.
/etc
and in several other places.
This set
must
be installed if you are installing the system from scratch, but should
not
be used if you are upgrading.
GENERIC
kernel, named
/netbsd.
You
must
install this distribution set.
/usr/share.
groff(1),
all related programs, and their manual pages.
NetBSD maintains its own set of sources for the X Window System in order to assure tight integration and compatibility. These sources are based on XFree86, and tightly track XFree86 releases. They are currently equivalent to XFree86 4.5.0. Binary sets for the X Window System are distributed with NetBSD. The sets are:
The alpha binary distribution sets are distributed as gzipped tar files
named with the extension
.tgz,
e.g.
base.tgz.
The instructions given for extracting the source sets work equally
well for the binary sets, but it is worth noting that if you use that
method, the filenames stored in the sets are relative and therefore
the files are extracted
below the current directory.
Therefore, if you want to extract the binaries into your system, i.e.
replace the system binaries with them, you have to run the
tar -xpf
command from the root directory (
/
) of your system.
This utility is used only in a Traditional method installation.
NetBSD/alpha 4.0 runs on most of the DEC Alpha PCI platforms, on all of the TURBOChannel models, on the high end 8200 and 8400 systems, and on the 4100 series.
The SRM console is required.
This
console can be distinguished from the ARC console (which is used to
boot
Windows NT)
by the fact that it has a command line interface,
rather than a menu-driven interface.
The SRM prompt is
`>>>'.
Some platforms have both the SRM console and the ARC console, and can switch between them, and other platforms have only one type of console loaded at any one time. If your system comes up with the ARC firmware, it may be possible to switch it to SRM with a menu or to download SRM from ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/Digital/Alpha/firmware/index.html. You may want to buy a firmware update CD from Compaq Computer Corporation.
More information on supported platforms and devices can be found on the alpha port web pages at http://www.NetBSD.org/.
A basic system will fit on a 200 MB disk (including swap) without too much difficulty, but you will probably want at least 500 MB of disk to have any level of comfort.
Although it is actually possible to boot and install NetBSD/alpha in only 16 MB of RAM, you will want to have at least 32 MB. We support add-in devices on the PCI, ISA, EISA and TurboChannel buses. Because NetBSD has an extremely machine-independent device driver system, many device drivers are the same as used in other ports that use the same bus. For example, the de network card driver is shared by the i386 and alpha ports. Some drivers on inspection appear as if they will work on the alpha but have not been tested because that hardware was not available to NetBSD testers; these are marked as UNTESTED below. If you have one of these devices, and it does work, please get in touch with port-alpha-maintainer@NetBSD.org and let us know that it works. If it doesn't work, do the same thing and we can probably fix it pretty easily.
Note that some devices, especially ISA-based devices, have to have
certain settings set properly for the install and
Parallel ports lpt0 0x378 7 [interrupt-driven or polling]
lpt1 0x278 [polling only]
lpt2 0x3bc [polling only]
AHA-174x SCSI host adapters (in enhanced mode)
ahb0 any any any
AHA-2X4X or AIC-7xxx-based SCSI host adapters
ahc0 any any any
Bus Logic BT445, BT74x, or BT9xx SCSI host adapters
bha0 0x330 any any
bha1 0x334 any any
MFM/ESDI/IDE/RLL hard disk controllers
wdc0 0x1f0 14 [supports two devices]
wdc1 0x170 15 [supports two devices]
ATA disks wd0, wd1, ...
SCSI disks sd0, sd1, ...
SCSI tapes st0, st1, ...
SCSI and ATAPI CD-ROMs cd0, cd1, ...
For each SCSI and IDE controller found, the SCSI or ATA(PI) devices
present on the bus are probed in increasing ID order for SCSI and
master/slave order for ATA(PI).
So the first SCSI drive found will be called sd0, the second sd1,
and so on ...
3COM 3x59X or 3COM 3x90X PCI Ethernet boards
ep0 any any [you must assign an interrupt in your
PCI BIOS, or let it do so for you]
Intel EtherExpress 100 Fast Ethernet adapters
fxp0 any any [you must assign an interrupt in your
PCI BIOS, or let it do so for you]
DEC DE200,201,202 EtherWORKS II/Turbo ISA Ethernet boards
le? 0x3005memory at D0000-DFFFF
le? 0x20010memory at D8000-DFFFF
You should enter the following SRM console command to enable the
le device:
>>> isacfg -mk -slot ? -dev 0 -handle DE200-LE -irq0 5
-membase0 d0000 -memlen0 10000 -iobase0 300 -etyp 1 -enadev 1
DEC DE203,204,205 EtherWORKS III ISA Ethernet boards
lc0 0x300any
lc1 0x320any
You should enter the following SRM console command to enable
the device:
>>> add_de205
GENERIC
kernels to detect them.
(Once installed, you can always rebuild your own kernel
to detect them anywhere you wish, of course.)
Here is a list of such devices and the necessary settings:
Device Name Port IRQ DRQ Misc
------ ---- ---- --- --- ----
Serial ports com0 0x3f8 4 [8250/16450/16550/clones]
com1 0x2f8 3 [8250/16450/16550/clones]
com2 0x3e8 5 [8250/16450/16550/clones]
Note that if you are installing or upgrading from a writable media, the media can be write-protected if you wish. These systems mount a root image from inside the kernel, and will not need to write to the media. If you booted from a floppy, the floppy disk may be removed from the drive after the system has booted.
Installation is supported from several media types, including:
The steps necessary to prepare the distribution sets for installation depend upon which installation medium you choose. The steps for the various media are outlined below.
binary/sets
and
alpha/binary/sets.
Proceed to the instruction on installation.
split(1)
command, running e.g.
split -b 235k base.tgz base.
to split the
base.tgz
file from
alpha/binary/sets
into files named
base.aa,
base.ab,
and so on.
Repeat this for all
set_name.tgz
files, splitting them into
set_name.xx
files.
Count the number of
set_name.xx
files that make up the
distribution sets you want to install or upgrade.
You will need one sixth that number of 1.44 MB floppies.
Format all of the floppies with
MS-DOS.
Do
not
make any of them bootable
MS-DOS
floppies, i.e. don't use
format /s
to format them.
(If the floppies are bootable, then the
MS-DOS
system files that make them bootable will take up some space, and you
won't be able to fit the distribution set parts on the disks.)
If you're using floppies that are formatted for
MS-DOS
by their manufacturers, they probably aren't bootable, and you can use
them out of the box.
Place all of the
set_name.xx
files on the
MS-DOS
disks.
Once you have the files on MS-DOS disks, you can proceed to the next step in the installation or upgrade process. If you're installing NetBSD from scratch, go to the section on preparing your hard disk, below. If you're upgrading an existing installation, go directly to the section on upgrading.
204.152.190.13
and the IPv6 address is
2001:4f8:4:7:230:48ff:fe31:43f2
(as of December, 2007).
Once you have this information, you can proceed to the next step in the installation or upgrade process. If you're installing NetBSD from scratch, go to the section on preparing your hard disk, below. If you're upgrading an existing installation, go directly to the section on upgrading.
/etc/exports
file on the NFS server and resetting its mount daemon (mountd).
(Both of these actions will probably require superuser
privileges on the server.)
You need to know the numeric IP address of the NFS server, and, if you don't have DHCP available on your network and the server is not on a network directly connected to the machine on which you're installing or upgrading NetBSD, you need to know the numeric IP address of the router closest to the NetBSD machine. Finally, you need to know the numeric IP address of the NetBSD machine itself.
Once the NFS server is set up properly and you have the information mentioned above, you can proceed to the next step in the installation or upgrade process. If you're installing NetBSD from scratch, go to the section on preparing your hard disk, below. If you're upgrading an existing installation, go directly to the section on upgrading.
If you're making the tape on a UNIX-like system, the easiest way to do so is probably something like:
# tar -cf tape_device dist_directories
where
tape_device
is the name of the tape device that
describes the tape drive you're using; possibly
/dev/rst0,
or something similar, but it will vary from system to system.
(If you can't figure it out, ask your system administrator.)
In the above example,
dist_directories
are the
distribution sets' directories, for the distribution sets you
wish to place on the tape.
For instance, to put the
kern-GENERIC, base, and etc
distributions on tape (in
order to do the absolute minimum installation to a new disk),
you would do the following:
# cd .../NetBSD-4.0
# cd alpha/binary
# tar -cf tape_device kern-GENERIC base etc
Once you have the files on the tape, you can proceed to the next step in the installation or upgrade process. If you're installing NetBSD from scratch, go to the section on preparing your hard disk, below. If you're upgrading an existing installation, go directly to the section on upgrading.
If you have any data on your disks that you want to keep,
back it up
before starting.
Note that
NetBSD/alpha
does not support booting more than
one operating system from a single disk, although it's fine to have
multiple operating systems on your machine if you have a separate
disk for
NetBSD,
or if one of them uses a network boot.
Installation of NetBSD/alpha is now easier than ever! For the latest news, problem reports, and discussion, join the port-alpha mailing list by mailing a line saying
subscribe port-alpha
to majordomo@NetBSD.org. Also, see http://www.NetBSD.org/ for more information.
If you encounter any problems, please report them via the mailing list or the
send-pr(1)
program so that they can be fixed for the next release.
To install or upgrade NetBSD, you need to first boot an installation program and then interact with the screen-menu program sysinst. The installation program actually consists of the NetBSD kernel plus an in-memory file system of utility programs.
The usual procedure is to write the installation system to a floppy disk set and then boot from the floppies, however, there are now six ways to boot the NetBSD/alpha installation system! Each approach loads the exact same installation bits. The six paths are:
In all cases, you need to transfer a
bootable image of the installation system
from the
NetBSD
CD or from an ftp site to the chosen media type.
Although booting from floppy is the usual path, the
hard drive boot is useful if you have another operating system (and a spare
drive) already installed, or if you don't mind swapping hard drives from
box to box.
CD and tape boots are nice and fast if you have a CD writer
or a tape format in common with another previously installed
UNIX-like
system.
Finally, most versions of SRM can locate the
NetBSD
boot program
netboot
via bootp and download it via tftp,
netboot
then mounts the root file system
(/)
via NFS and loads the kernel.
Note that if you are installing or upgrading from a writable media, the media can be write-protected if you wish. These systems mount a root image from inside the kernel, and will not need to write to the media. If you booted from a floppy, the floppy disk may be removed from the drive after the system has booted.
The 3.5", 1.44 MB boot floppy set is found under the
NetBSD/alpha
4.0 distribution directory in
alpha/installation/floppy/
as two files called
disk1of2
and
disk2of2,
or as three files called
disk1of3,
disk2of3,
and
disk3of3.
You need to put these disk images on two or three floppy disks.
If you have a UNIX-like system handy, you can do this with commands like the following:
# dd if=disk1of3 of=/dev/rfd0a bs=18k
# dd if=disk2of3 of=/dev/rfd0a bs=18k
# dd if=disk3of3 of=/dev/rfd0a bs=18k
If the
UNIX-like
system you are using is not a
NetBSD
system, you will probably need to replace
/dev/rfd0a
with the name of the floppy device on your particular system.
If you have an
MS-DOS
or
Windows
system available, you can use
the
rawrite.exe
utility to transfer the image to a floppy
disk.
This utility is provided with the
NetBSD/i386
install tools, under
i386/installation/misc;
a documentation file,
rawrite.doc
is available there as well.
Once the floppy has been made, you simply need to put it in the drive and type
>>> B DVA0
All three of these media types use the same initial image:
.../installation/diskimage/cdhdtape
The image can be written to a hard drive partition with a command
like:
# dd if=cdhdtape of=/dev/rsd0c bs=16k
To boot from a magnetic tape device such as DAT or DLT, it is important to create the tape image with 512-byte records. Use a command like:
# dd if=cdhdtape of=/dev/rst0 bs=512 conv=osync
If the host system is not NetBSD, the names of the destination devices are likely to be different. Be sure to use a ``raw partition'' device that doesn't skip over labels!
The use of CD-R devices varies greatly depending on the host OS and host software; it isn't possible to give typical instructions here.
The installation subdirectory
instkernel/
contains
netbsd.gz;
this is the same install kernel but without a bootable file system
image wrapped around it.
You can perform an complete reinstall by beginning it as an upgrade,
and booting this kernel in the normal way off the root file system
(/)
of a previous installation.
The gzipped image can be booted directly; it is not necessary to uncompress it first.
Booting NetBSD/alpha 4.0 over a network requires a BOOTP or DHCP server, a TFTP server and an NFS server. (These are usually all run on the same machine.) There are three basic stages to the boot:
/netbsd.
/)
via NFS and continues.
You will need to set up servers for BOOTP, TFTP and NFS.
If you want to run a full system
from the network, untar the
NetBSD
snapshot or distribution
into a directory on your server and NFS export that directory
to the client.
Make sure you put a kernel there as well, and create the device nodes in
/dev
with
sh ./MAKEDEV all.
Detailed instructions on netbooting can be found by visiting the
NetBSD
alpha platform page:
http://www.NetBSD.org/ports/alpha/
At the time of this release, the URL for the netbooting instructions is: http://www.NetBSD.org/docs/network/netboot/
You'll want to map root to
root
(rather than the default
nobody)
when you export your root file system
(/).
A typical
/etc/exports
line on a
NetBSD
system would be:
/usr/export/alpha -maproot=0 myclient.mydom.com
One option is to load just the install kernel over the network but then proceed to a normal disk-based install and disk-based operation. (Perhaps the alpha doesn't have a floppy drive, or you just don't want to use a Windows system to make the floppy; we understand.)
For this case, you still need to export an NFS root, but
the only thing it needs to have in it is the
instkernel
image from the distribution.
The gzipped image can be booted directly; it is not necessary to uncompress it first.
The console will be using TFTP to load the
NetBSD
boot program,
so for the TFTP setup, you need to copy the second stage bootstrap,
netboot,
into an appropriately named file such as
boot.netbsd.alpha
in the directory used by your TFTP server.
If you extracted a full snapshot, you can get the netboot program from
/usr/mdec/netboot;
if not, you can get this from the
installation/netboot
directory where you found the alpha distribution.
For the BOOTP server you need to specify the:
Here's an example for a UNIX-like system running bootpd:
myhost.mydom.com: :ht=ethernet:ha=0000c0391ae4:\
:ip=192.168.1.2:sm=255.255.255.0:\
:sa=192.168.1.1:bf=boot.netbsd.alpha:rp=/usr/export/alpha:
And here's an example for a UNIX-like system running the ISC dhcpd:
host axp {
hardware ethernet 0:0:c0:39:1a:e4;
fixed-address 192.168.1.2;
option host-name "myhost.mydom.com";
filename "boot.netbsd.alpha";
option root-path "/usr/export/alpha";
option domain-name-servers 192.168.1.1;
option broadcast-address 255.255.255.0;
option domain-name "my.domain";
}
The only Ethernet device the console on most alpha systems knows how to boot from is the onboard Ethernet interface or a DEC Tulip (21040, 21041, 21140) PCI Ethernet card. Some older SMC 100 Mbps cards that use this chip have been known to work as well. Many older systems will not be able to use the newer 2.0 stepping of the 21140, however. If your system appears not to be receiving packets, this may be the problem. (You may or may not be able to update your firmware to fix this; see the alpha port pages on http://www.NetBSD.org/ for more information on this.) In general, 10 Mb cards from manufacturers other than DEC will work, and 100 Mb cards not from DEC will not.
Once you're set up, you should be able to boot with:
>>> boot -proto bootp ewa0
You should permanently set your protocol to BOOTP with:
>>> set ewa0_protocols bootp
The 3000 series of Turbochannel systems and certain other models use old SRM, do not have a -proto option and use different device names. They also tend to not netboot very well so you probably don't need to worry about this section. However, if you want to give it a try, note the following differences:
setnetbootinfo(8)
program will probably also be necessary, as it is unlikely that an SRM
from that era will properly communicate the ethernet HW address to the
boot program.
>>> boot ez0
Using sysinst, installing NetBSD is a relatively easy process. You still should read this document and have it in hand when doing the installation process. This document tries to be a good guideline for the installation and as such covers many details for the sake of completeness. Do not let this discourage you; the install program is not hard to use.
Should you encounter hardware problems during installation, try rebooting after unplugging removable devices you don't need for installation. Non-removable devices can be disabled with userconf (use boot -c to enter it).
The following is a walk-through of the steps you will take while
getting
NetBSD
installed on your hard disk.
sysinst
is a menu driven
installation system that allows for some freedom in doing the
installation.
Sometimes, questions will be asked and in many cases
the default answer will be displayed in brackets
(``[ ]'')
after the question.
If you wish to stop the installation, you may press
CONTROL-C
at any time, but if you do, you'll have to begin the installation
process again from scratch by running the
/sysinst
program from the command prompt.
It is not necessary to reboot.
First, let's describe a quick install. The other sections of this document go into the installation procedure in more detail, but you may find that you do not need this. If you want detailed instructions, skip to the next section. This section describes a basic installation, using a CD-ROM install as an example.
e:
cd \NetBSD-4.0\i386\installation\misc
rawrite
When asked for a source filename, answer
(...alpha installation root)\floppy\disk1of3
When asked for a destination drive answer `a'.
# dd if=.../boot1.fs of=/dev/rfd0a bs=18k
>>> B DVA0
After language selection, the main menu will be displayed.
.***********************************************.
* NetBSD-4.0 Install System *
* *
*>a: Install NetBSD to hard disk *
* b: Upgrade NetBSD on a hard disk *
* c: Re-install sets or install additional sets *
* d: Reboot the computer *
* e: Utility menu *
* x: Exit Install System *
.***********************************************.
root,
and set a password for that account.
You are also advised to edit the file
/etc/rc.conf
to match your system needs.
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/doc.
Further information can be found on
http://www.xfree86.org/.
Boot your machine. The boot loader will start, and will print a countdown and begin booting.
If the boot loader messages do not appear in a reasonable amount of time, you either have a bad boot floppy or a hardware problem. Try writing the install floppy image to a different disk, and using that.
It will take a while to load the kernel
from the floppy,
probably around a minute or so, then, the kernel boot messages
will be displayed.
This may take a little while also, as
NetBSD
will be probing your system to discover which hardware devices are
installed.
The most important thing to know is that
wd0
is
NetBSD's
name for your first IDE disk,
wd1
the second, etc.
sd0
is your first SCSI disk,
sd1
the second, etc.
Note that once the system has finished booting, you need not leave the floppy in the disk drive.
Once NetBSD has booted and printed all the boot messages, you will be presented with a welcome message and a main menu. It will also include instructions for using the menus.
If you will not use network operation during the installation, but you do want your machine to be configured for networking once it is installed, you should first go to the Utility menu, and select the Configure network option. If you only want to temporarily use networking during the installation, you can specify these parameters later. If you are not using the Domain Name System (DNS), you can give an empty response in reply to answers relating to this.
To start the installation, select Install NetBSD to hard disk from the main menu.
The first thing is to identify the disk on which you want to
install
NetBSD.
sysinst
will report a list of disks it finds
and ask you for your selection.
Depending on how many disks are found, you may get a different message.
You should see disk names like
wd0,
wd1,
sd0
or
sd1.
You will be asked if you want to use the entire disk or only part of the disk. If you decide to use the entire disk for NetBSD, it will be checked if there are already other systems present on the disk, and you will be asked to confirm whether you want to overwrite these.
The partition table of the NetBSD part of a disk is called a disklabel. There are 4 layouts for the NetBSD part of the disk that you can pick from: Standard, Standard with X, Custom and Use Existing. The first two use a set of default values (that you can change) suitable for a normal installation, possibly including X. With the Custom option you can specify everything yourself. The last option uses the partition info already present on the disk.
You will be presented with the current layout of the NetBSD disklabel, and given a chance to change it. For each partition, you can set the type, offset and size, block and fragment size, and the mount point. The type that NetBSD uses for normal file storage is called 4.2BSD. A swap partition has a special type called swap. Some partitions in the disklabel have a fixed purpose.
a/)
bcd-hd
is the partition mounted on
/usr,
but this is historical practice and not a fixed value.
You will then be asked to name your disk's disklabel. The default response will be ok for most purposes. If you choose to name it something different, make sure the name is a single word and contains no special characters. You don't need to remember this name.
You are now at the point of no return.
Nothing has been
written to your disk yet, but if you confirm that you want to
install
NetBSD,
your hard drive will be modified.
If you are sure you want to proceed, enter
yes
at the prompt.
The install program will now label your disk and make the file systems you specified. The file systems will be initialized to contain NetBSD bootstrapping binaries and configuration files. You will see messages on your screen from the various NetBSD disk preparation tools that are running. There should be no errors in this section of the installation. If there are, restart from the beginning of the installation process. Otherwise, you can continue the installation program after pressing the return key.
The NetBSD distribution consists of a number of sets, that come in the form of gzipped tarfiles. A few sets must be installed for a working system, others are optional. At this point of the installation, you will be presented with a menu which enables you to choose from one of the following methods of installing the sets. Some of these methods will first load the sets on your hard disk, others will extract the sets directly.
For all these methods, the first step is making the sets available for extraction, and then do the actual installation. The sets can be made available in a few different ways. The following sections describe each of those methods. After reading the one about the method you will be using, you can continue to the section labeled `Extracting the distribution sets'.
To be able to install using ftp, you first need to configure
your network setup, if you haven't already at the start of
the install procedure.
sysinst
will do this for you, asking you
if you want to use DHCP, and if not
to provide data like IP address, hostname, etc.
If you do not have name service set up for the machine that you
are installing on, you can just press
RETURN
in answer to these questions, and DNS will not be used.
You will also be asked to specify the host that you want to transfer the sets from, the directory on that host, the account name and password used to log into that host using ftp, and optionally a proxy server to use. If you did not set up DNS when answering the questions to configure networking, you will need to specify an IP address instead of a hostname for the ftp server.
sysinst will proceed to transfer all the default set files from the remote site to your hard disk.
To be able to install using NFS, you first need to configure
your network setup, if you haven't already at the start of
the install procedure.
sysinst
will do this for you, asking you
if you want to use DHCP, and if not
to provide data like IP address, hostname, etc.
If you do not have name service set up for the machine that you
are installing on, you can just press
RETURN
in answer to these questions, and DNS will not be used.
You will also be asked to specify the host that you want to transfer the sets from, and the directory on that host that the files are in. This directory should be mountable by the machine you are installing on, i.e. correctly exported to your machine.
If you did not set up DNS when answering the questions to configure networking, you will need to specify an IP address instead of a hostname for the NFS server.
When installing from a CD-ROM, you will be asked to specify
the device name for your CD-ROM player
(usually cd0),
and the directory name on the CD-ROM where the distribution files are.
sysinst will then check if the files are indeed available in the specified location, and proceed to the actual extraction of the sets.
In order to install from a local file system, you will
need to specify the device that the file system resides
on
(for example sd1e)
the type of the file system,
and the directory on the specified file system where the sets are located.
sysinst
will then check if it
can indeed access the sets at that location.
This option assumes that you have already done some preparation yourself. The sets should be located in a directory on a file system that is already accessible. sysinst will ask you for the name of this directory.
After the install sets containing the NetBSD distribution have been made available, you can either extract all the sets (a full installation), or only extract sets that you have selected. In the latter case, you will be shown the currently selected sets, and given the opportunity to select the sets you want. Some sets always need to be installed (kern, base, and etc) they will not be shown in this selection menu.
Before extraction begins, you can elect to watch the files being extracted; the name of each file that is extracted will be shown. This can slow down the installation process considerably, especially on machines with slow graphics consoles or serial consoles. Alternatively, you will be asked if you wish to have a progress bar. This is the preferred option as it shows progress without significantly slowing down the installation process.
After all the files have been extracted, all the necessary device node files will be created. If you have already configured networking, you will be asked if you want to use this configuration for normal operation. If so, these values will be installed in the network configuration files. The next menu will allow you to select the time zone that you're in, to make sure your clock has the right offset from UTC. Finally you will be asked to select a password encryption algorithm and can then set a password for the "root" account, to prevent the machine coming up without access restrictions.
Congratulations, you have successfully installed NetBSD 4.0. You can now reboot the machine, and boot NetBSD from hard disk.
The normal installation involves running the install shell script and interactively configuring the file systems, and then simply unpacking the tar files into these followed by running MAKEDEV.
However, as stated above it is also possible to do the installation yourself from the shell, and in any case it is helpful to understand what the install script does. The procedure is:
/etc/disktab,
see
disktab(5)
disklabel(8),
newfs(8)
mount(8)
the new root on
/mnt
/usr/mdec
and run
installboot(8)
If you are reviewing man pages on
NetBSD
platforms other than alpha, be sure that when reading
installboot(8)
you read the alpha version by typing:
# man 8 alpha/installboot
At this point you need only unpack the distribution sets by running
tar(1)
as described below.
/install
and
/upgrade
traditional installation scripts
The
install
and
upgrade
scripts are still there, so by exiting the
sysinst
program you can type
install
or
upgrade
at the shell prompt and run them as you did in the good old days.
You may install
on either a SCSI or an IDE disk; you will be prompted for
the disk to install on.
The disks in your system will be numbered starting at
xd0
(where
x
is an
`s'
for SCSI disks,
`w'
for IDE disks) based on the SCSI-ID or IDE drive order; if you have
more than one disk, watch the boot messages carefully to see
which ones are probed as which numbers.
Once you've selected a disk to install on, you'll be prompted for the geometry. This is also displayed in the boot messages, and you'll be given a chance to review the boot messages again to get the exact figures for the number of cylinders, heads and sectors.
After this you must specify the size of your partitions. Generally you'll be giving the sizes in cylinders; the install program will tell you how many bytes there are in each cylinder.
The swap partition is the second thing you specify, after the
/
(root) partition.
Regardless of the size of your disk, you'll
want to specify a swap partition that's at least as large as
the amount of RAM you have, and probably not less than 64 MB
in any case.
If you have a small disk (under 500 MB), it's probably best to
devote all of the disk (excepting 64 MB or more for the swap)
to the
/
(root) partition.
If you have more space, we recommend devoting at least 32 MB,
and preferably 48 MB, to the
/
(root) partition.
/usr
will need 150 MB or so if you're not installing X, 200 MB or so if you are.
A typical organization is 50 MB for
/
(root), 150-250 MB for
swap, and the remaining space for
/usr.
With enough swap space configured, you can make
/tmp
a nice, fast mfs.
See
mount_mfs(8),
and note that the mfs will require swap space for
the largest planned amount of
/tmp
storage.
It doesn't return space when files are deleted,
but just keeps it its own freelist so the swap space required is
equal to the highwater mark of
/tmp
use, plus space required to back up main memory and store inactive images.
Once you've specified this information, the install script will
write the disklabel, install boot blocks to make the disk
bootable, initialise the file systems, and mount them all under
/mnt.
You are now ready to go on to the next step.
After doing the disk and file system setup with either
shell commands or the script assist, you then need only
unpack the distribution sets with the
tar(1)
command.
To do this you will need access from the target host to the tar files
that contain the operating system in order to extract them to your disk.
This is done via an NFS or FTP transfer over a network,
via a CD-ROM archive, a tape archive, or by preloading an accessible hard
drive with the necessary tar files.
All you need to do is mount the CD-ROM, which will generally be device cd0. (The initial boot messages will tell you what the CD-ROM drive is probed as.) This would be done with:
# mount -r -t cd9660 /dev/cd0a /mnt2
The first thing you need to do is configure the loopback network interface, which is done with the command
# ifconfig lo0 127.0.0.1
Then you will have to configure your Ethernet card. The command
# ifconfig -l
will give you a list of the network interfaces on your system. It will show you your ethernet cards first, followed by lo0 (the loopback interface that we configured above), ppp0 (the PPP interface) and sl0 (the SLIP interface).
To configure your ethernet card, type
ifconfig if inet
addr
[netmask]
[media media]
where
if
is the network card (interface), almost always
de0,
addr
is the IP address, the optional
netmask
parameter is the network mask,
and the optional
media
parameter is one of:
| 10base2 | BNC connector | 10 Mbps |
| AUI | AUI connector | 10 Mbps |
| 10baseT/UTP | Twisted pair connector | 10 Mbps |
| 100baseTX | Twisted pair connector | 100 Mbps |
| 100baseFX | Fibre-optic connector | 100 Mbps |
| 100baseT4 | T4 twisted pair interface | 100 Mbps |
If the host you are getting the data files from is not on the local network, you will also have to configure a gateway into your system. Do this with
# route add default <gateway-IP-address>
One improvement over the good old days is that the resolver is now
present; by configuring
/etc/resolv.conf
you can get name resolution during any install NFS or FTP operations.
Once networking has been configured, you may mount the directory with the install files via NFS, or download them via FTP.
To mount them via nfs, type
# mount -t nfs <hostname:/path/to/nfs/volume> /mnt2
If this volume has been exported read-only, you may need the -r option to mount.
To download the install sets with ftp, create a directory in which to put them and then use the ftp client to download them. Mirror sites are listed at: http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/ A typical session might be:
# mkdir /mnt/usr/release
# cd /mnt/usr/release
# ftp ftp.NetBSD.org
the following commands are given to the ftp program after logging in
ftp> prompt
ftp> cd /pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-4.0/alpha/binary/sets
ftp> mget *
ftp> quit
Feel free, of course, to leave off the sets that you don't need if you don't plan to install everything.
Change to the root directory of your hard
drive (which is
/mnt
if you've used the standard install script
to this point) by typing
# cd /mnt
For this and the following commands, replace
/mnt/usr/release/
with the path to your NFS volume or CD-ROM if that's how you
chose to access your install files instead.
The sets and kernel are extracted with:
# cd /mnt
# for i in base kern comp etc games man misc text; do
tar -zxpf /mnt/usr/release/$i.tgz;
# done
or perhaps:
# cd /mnt
# for i in /mnt/usr/release/*.tgz; do
echo $i
tar -zxpf $i
# done
Now make the device nodes:
# cd /mnt/dev
# sh ./MAKEDEV all
Unmount the file systems and halt. The exact instructions to type here will depend on the file systems you created, but typically the commands are:
# cd /
# umount /mnt/usr
# umount /mnt
# sync
(sync)is not strictly necessary but it is traditional
# halt
You should now be at the SRM console's
>>>
prompt and can reboot
into the new configuration (possibly after an optional power cycle)
with a command such as:
>>> boot dka0
This command might be: boot dka100 if your drive is on ID 1. You can usually use show device to see a full list of bootable devices in your system. Your system will come up in single-user mode, ready for you to configure it.
You can create the floppy needed for installation under MS-DOS or Windows. Supposing your 1.44 MB floppy drive is drive A:, and your CD is drive E:, do the following from an MS-DOS command prompt:
e:
cd \NetBSD-4.0\installation\misc
rawrite
When asked for a source filename, answer
...\floppy\disk1of2
When asked for a destination drive answer
a
(Repeat the procedure for
installation/floppy/disk2of2.)
Once you've got the operating system running, there are a few things you need to do in order to bring the system into a properly configured state, with the most important ones described below.
/etc/rc.conf
If you or the installation software haven't done any configuration of
/etc/rc.conf
(sysinst
usually will),
the system will drop you into single user mode on first reboot with the
message
/etc/rc.conf is not configured. Multiuser boot aborted.
and with the root file system
(/)
mounted read-only.
When the system asks you to choose a shell, simply press
RETURN
to get to a
/bin/sh
prompt.
If you are asked for a terminal type, respond with
vt220
(or whatever is appropriate for your terminal type)
and press
RETURN.
You may need to type one of the following commands to get your delete key
to work properly, depending on your keyboard: