Samantha on Fri, 28 Jun 2002 22:10:09 +0200


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[PLUG] netbsd success(notes for interested parties)


Hello all,

Well I have been busy installing netbsd and this time(2nd) I made enough 
progress to use this as a working system. My first attempt with it, was 
trying to have it along side Linux and there was something about 
netbsd writing over a few block of linux's partition, thereby destroying 
crucial data (illegally download music made by now dead artists). I also 
had several problems in finding good docs, for 
seemingly simple problems, such as: switching terms (Alt+Ctrl+Fn).

However, I learned that Netbsd.org (and the netbsd-help mailing list
archives) has a lot of very good documentation, if I knew how to look for
it. For eg on google:
"netbsd networking howto"
would show results to the appropriate page on netbsd.org

The machine was an i386 and I wasn't in the mood to burn cds, so I did a 
netinstall. Two virgin floppies and a fast internet connection was 
essentially all I needed.

I installed v1.5.2 And this is more or less some instructions, should 
anyone need it.

The floppies can be downloaded here:
http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/systems/unix/NetBSD/NetBSD-1.4.3/i386/installation/floppy/
among other places and the files are boot1.fs and boot2.fs

Then: dd if=boot1.fs of=/dev/fd0
Stick it in floppy drive and reboot. 

I stuck with all the default values sysinst (installer) gave me, in terms 
of geometry etc. Then since its a network install, you do need your ip 
number, gateway, and other network related info. IIRC choosing the option 
to get IPV6 got me many errors, I couldn't figure it out so I gave up.

Toward the end, I was asked to do fun stuff such as configure time zone, 
and add a line in rc.conf. 

And that was it. 

I just followed the tutorial that I printed from
www.mclink.it/personal/MG2508/nbsdeng/netbsd.html

Once you log in the first time, you might want to get the pkgsrc 
collection ( "set of software utilities and libraries which have been 
ported to NetBSD") from:
ftp..netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/pkgsrc.tar.gz 

I unpacked it and went around and invidually installed whatever I wanted. 
(I like building from source). Only problem I encountered here was 
figuring out which dir these packages were being installed into. Gabriel 
was nice to help me out with this (among other probs). Turns out they are 
in /usr/pkg/bin somethin you might want to add to your path.

Configuring X wasn't really a problem. I just had to know what kind of
video card, and other info that would need to configure X anyway.

Some sites I found interesting and useful:
www.bsdapps.com
www.bsdtoday.com

And I admit, that one reason I decided to install a bsd flavored os was 
because I like the little red devil. :)


 -- 
Samantha
---------------
Ignorance must certainly be bliss or there wouldn't be so many
people so resolutely pursuing it.




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