[871] in SIPB_Linux_Development
NetBSD installation
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (ghudson@MIT.EDU)
Wed Dec 21 17:43:47 1994
From: ghudson@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 1994 17:43:24 -0500
To: rtfm-maintainers@MIT.EDU, netbsd-dev@MIT.EDU, linux-dev@MIT.EDU
We are now exporting the NetBSD 1.0 distribution via NFS at
sipb-nfs:/u2/lockers/netbsd/i386. This makes it relatively easy to
get at the disk sets for installing NetBSD. It's only about 20MB of
space.
After verifying that /usr/athena/etc/mountd crashes when I attach the
netbsd locker from maze, and /usr/local/etc/mountd doesn't, I modified
picayune's /etc/athena/rc.athena so that it runs /usr/local/etc/mountd
instead of /usr/athena. I also removed the -i option from the command
line (thus disabling hostname checking), since we don't restrict by
hostname and this allows people to mount the NetBSD distribution while
installing NetBSD (there is no way to set the hostname from the NetBSD
install disk).
I also modified maze's /etc/athena/rc.athena to run mountd without the
-i option, so Linux installers no longer need to set their hostnames
before doing NFS installs.
I tested my NetBSD installation script on glacier after installing
NetBSD on it, and fixed a few problems. I ran into the major
complication that the default kernel doesn't support loading kernel
modules. I think Yoav's suggestion of incorporating Athena and
XFree86 3.1 installation into specialized versions of the NetBSD
install disks may be the best way of solving this; that way, we can
just build kernel disks which support loadable kernel modules.
Another problem: part of the Athena installation is setting up name
service, which you want to do very early; another part of the Athena
installation is adding a line to /etc/ttys to start up xlogin, which
you want to do after you've got X working. Since we can't
automatically get X to work for people, we probably have to fall back
on adding a commented-out line to /etc/ttys and telling people to
uncomment it after they get X working.
Incidentally, there is a lot of room for improving the NetBSD
installation docs; they (more or less correctly) avoid going into too
much detail about partitioning your disks and explaining the issues
associated with disk geometry remapping. It might be nice to have a
short document (both sides of a page in small print, or maybe as much
as 8-10 pages, depending on the depth) on repartitioning your disk and
understanding disk geometry issues.
