Re: [PLUG] netbsd success(notes for interested parties)

[gabriel rosenkoetter <gr@eclipsed.net>]

On Fri, Jun 28, 2002 at 04:07:45PM -0400, Samantha wrote:
> 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).

Hrm.

I'm certain that people do this without problems. I think the key is
to not let NetBSD's fdisk get at any portion of the disk you don't
want to have be NetBSD. It's certainly possible to use the NetBSD
boot loader to load other operating systems, but you'll probably be
happier using lilo or grub to load everything. (I think I noticed
that grub had native support for loading a NetBSD kernel, rather
than still having to pipeline through a second-stage bootloader,
which is pretty cool.)

> had several problems in finding good docs, for 
> seemingly simple problems, such as: switching terms (Alt+Ctrl+Fn).

That can be completely configured in /etc/wscons.conf, btw.

> 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

In general, starting out at http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/ and
then http://mail-index.netbsd.org/ is probably reasonable. (Or using
a Google site search on them; mail-index's search engine tends to
work maybe three days out of a week on average. This sounds like
NetBSD folks are really lazy, but keep in mind that we're interested
in OS research and development, not in silly frills. :^>)

> 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.

Actually, you probably only needed one floppy as long as you don't
have particularly outrageous/old hardware. But using the full floppy
install isn't a bad thing.

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

Hrm. You might consider upgrading to 1.6. It's got quite a few
security and performance enhancements over 1.5.2. If you want to get
a current release candidate build (1.6 will be out for real "soon"),
have a look at ftp://releng.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-daily/.

> Then: dd if=boot1.fs of=/dev/fd0

If you're doing this under NetBSD, you want of=/dev/fd0a and,
depending on your floppy drive, maybe also bs=1k.

> 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.

I think IPv6 is known to be broken in the install floppy kernel.
(You don't really need it as things stand, and I'm pretty sure it's
fixed in -current, so also in 1.5.3 and 1.6.)

For netboot (not just install) setup,
http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/network/netboot/ is very helpful
(including what you have to do on the server side on a variety

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

That'd be rc_configured=YES. (Without it, the boot stops and you get
dumped into single user. We used to force you to go edit rc.conf by
hand to get around this, but somebody decided to be user friendlier.
I'm not sure I approve. ;^>)

> 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 

One usually untars this at /usr/pkgsrc. Note that you can set
environment variables (like LOCAL_BASE, which defaults to /usr/pkg
and controls where the packages will be installed) in /etc/mk.conf
(it doesn't exist by default, I don't think; it's presumed that if
you want it there to do things, you'll know enough to know to create
it).

Also note that, if you're not going to regularly cvs update all of
pkgsrc (which can be a drag with a slow network connection or a slow
disk), you'll want to at least keep pkgsrc/mk cvs update'd
regularly. (This will fix almost all of your "pkgsrc broke!"
problems, should you have any.)

Also note that NetBSD's pkgsrc works as is on Linux and after
setting up software called Zoularis (written by Christos Zoulas) on
Solaris.

> 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.

There's an XF86 4.2.0 snapshot up on ftp.netbsd.org for current
anyway, and I'm pretty sure it's what we'll be shipping with 1.6.
XF86 4.2.0 is better in a lot of ways, including that X -configure
or xf86cfg will probably figure out your X setup for you.

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

That's acceptable.

I've got some spare case tags with him on it, if you'd like one.
(I've also got the Wasabi version, with the green samurai daemon.)

-- 
gabriel rosenkoetter
gr@eclipsed.net

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