Preparing your System for NetBSD installation

First and foremost, before beginning the installation process, make sure you have a reliable backup of any data on your hard disk that you wish to keep. Repartitioning your hard disk is an excellent way to destroy important data.

Second, read and perform the instructions in arm32/platform/prep that are specific to your platform for partitioning and booting (even if you're dedicating a device to NetBSD).

Finally, when you are happy with your NetBSD installation, do whatever is necessary to restore order to the partition you took space away from. This will most likely involve restoring files, but might involve some other ``house-work''.

Your hard disk is now prepared to have NetBSD installed on it, and you should proceed with the installation instructions.

Installing the NetBSD System

Installing NetBSD is a relatively complex process, but if you have this document in hand and are careful to read and remember the information which is presented to you by the install program, it shouldn't be too much trouble.

Before you begin, you should know the geometry of your hard disk, i.e. the sector size (note that sector sizes other than 512 bytes are not currently supported), the number of sectors per track, the number of tracks per cylinder (also known as the number of heads), and the number of cylinders on the disk. The NetBSD kernel will try to discover these parameters on its own, and if it can it will print them at boot time. If possible, you should use the parameters it prints. (You might not be able to because you're sharing your disk with another operating system, or because your disk is old enough that the kernel can't figure out its geometry.)

If NetBSD will be sharing the disk with RiscOS or another operating system, you should have already completed the section of these notes that instructed you on how to prepare your hard disk. You should know the size of the NetBSD area of the disk and its offset from the beginning of the disk. You will need this information when setting up your NetBSD partitions.

You should now be ready to install NetBSD. It might be handy for you to have a pencil, some paper, and a calculator handy.

The following is a walk-through of the steps you will take while getting NetBSD installed on your hard disk. If any question has a default answer, it 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.

Boot your machine using the installation kernel for your platform. (Instructions for doing this on your platform can be found in the preparation section of this document.)

If this doesn't work, ensure that you're using the correct kernel for your hardware.

Depending upon your platform and the method of loading the, it may take a while to load the kernel.

You will then be presented with the NetBSD kernel boot messages. You will want to read them, to determine your disk's name and geometry. Its name will be something like sd0 or wd0 and the geometry will be printed on a line that begins with its name. As mentioned above, you will need your disk's geometry when creating NetBSD's partitions. You will also need to know the name, to tell the install tools what disk to install on.

While booting, you will probably see several warnings. You should be warned that no swap space is present, and that init(8) cannot find /etc/rc. Do not be alarmed, these are completely normal. When you reach the prompt asking you for a shell name, just press RETURN.

You will be asked if you wish to install or upgrade your system or go to a shell prompt. Enter install.

You will be presented with a welcome message and a prompt, asking if you wish to proceed with the installation process. If you wish to proceed, enter `y' and press RETURN.

You will be asked what type of disk driver you have. The valid options are listed by the install program, to make sure you get it right.

The install program will then tell you which disks of that type it can install on, and ask you which it should use. Reply with the name of your disk. (The first disk of the type you selected, either wd0 for IDE disks, or sd0 for SCSI disks, is the default.)

You will then be asked to name your disk's disklabel. The default response is `mywd' or `mysd' depending on the type of your disk, and for most purposes it will be OK. 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 will be prompted for your disk's geometry information, i.e. the number of bytes per sector, cylinders on the disk, tracks per cylinder (heads), and sectors per track. Enter them when they are requested. If you make a mistake, press CONTROL-C and when you get to the shell prompt, restart the install process by running the install command. Once you have entered this data, the install program will tell you the total size of your disk, in both sectors, and cylinders. Remember this number; if you're installing on the whole disk, you'll need it again soon.

When describing your partitions, you will have the option of entering data about them in units of disk sectors or cylinders. If you choose to enter the information in units of sectors, remember that, for optimal performance, partitions should begin and end on cylinder boundaries. You will be asked about which units you wish to use, and you should reply with `c' for cylinders, or `s' for sectors.

You will be asked for the size of the NetBSD portion of the disk. If you're installing on the whole disk, reply with the size of the disk, as printed earlier by the install program. If you're using only part of the disk, reply with the size that you specified in the partition editor. (Don't forget to enter the size in the units you specified in the last step!)

If you are not installing on the whole disk, you will be asked for the offset of the NetBSD partition from the beginning of the disk. Reply with the appropriate offset (again, in whichever units you specified), as determined by how you set up your disk using the partition editor.

You will be asked to enter the size of your NetBSD root partition (/). It should be at least 13 MB, but if you are going to be doing development, 14-16 MB is a more desirable size. This size should be expressed in units of sectors or cylinders, depending on which you said you wanted to use.

Next, you will be asked for the size of your swap partition. You should probably allocate twice as much swap space as you have real memory. Systems that will be heavily used should have more swap space allocated, and systems that will be lightly used can get by with less. If you want the system to be able to save crash dumps when it panics, you will need at least as much swap space as you have RAM. Again, this number should be expressed in units of sectors or cylinders, as appropriate.

The install program will then ask you for information about the rest of the partitions you want on your disk. For most purposes, you will want only one more partition, /usr. (Machines used as servers will probably also want /var as a separate partition. That can be done with these installation tools, but is not covered here.) The install program will tell you how much space there is left to be allocated in the NetBSD area of the disk, and, if you only want one more partition (/usr), you should enter it at the prompt when the installer asks you how large the next partition should be. It will then ask you for the name of the mount point for that partition. If you're doing a basic installation, that is /usr.

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, and its contents may be scrambled at the whim of the install program. This is especially likely if you have given the install program incorrect information. 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. It will also create an /etc/fstab for your system, and mount all of the file systems under /mnt. (In other words, your / (root) partition will be mounted on /mnt, your /usr partition on /mnt/usr, and so on.) There should be no errors in this section of the installation. If there are, restart from the beginning of the installation process.

You will be placed at a shell prompt ( `#'). The task is to install the distribution sets. The flow of installation differs depending on your hardware resources, and on what media the distribution sets reside.

To install from floppy

After you have picked a temporary directory, enter the Load_fd command, to load the distribution sets from your floppies.

You will be asked which floppy drive to use. Enter `0' (zero) if you're using the first floppy drive, or enter `1' if you're using the second.

You will be prompted to insert a floppy into the drive, to have its contents copied to your hard disk. Do so, and press RETURN to begin copying. When that is done, read the remainder of the floppies that contain the distribution sets that you want to install, one by one. When the last is read, and you are being prompted for another, press CONTROL-C.

Run the Extract command once for each distribution set you wish to install. For instance, if you wish to install the base distribution set, followed by the text distribution set, and finally the etc distribution set, use the commands:

       # Extract base
       # Extract text
       # Extract etc

For each extraction, it will ask you if the extraction should be verbose. If you reply affirmatively, it will print out the name of each file that's being extracted.

Note:

If you know that you will be running low on disk space when installing NetBSD, you can load and extract one distribution set at a time. To do this, load only the floppies which contain the files for the first distribution set, extract them, and then change to the temporary directory and remove them with the command rm set_name.??

Once you are finished extracting all of the sets that you wish to install, you should proceed to the instructions below (after the last install medium type-specific instructions), that explain how you should configure your system.

To install from tape

After you have picked a temporary directory, enter the Load_tape command, to load the distribution sets from tape.

You will be asked which tape drive to use. The default is rst0, which is correct if you're using the SCSI tape drive with the lowest SCSI-ID number. (For the SCSI tape drive with the next lowest SCSI-ID number, you should use rst1, and so on.)

You will be prompted to press RETURN when you have inserted the tape into the tape drive. When you do, the contents of the tape will be extracted into the temporary directory, and the names of the files being extracted will be printed.

After the tape has been extracted, to go the directory containing the first distribution set you wish to install. (Depending on how you made the tape, it's probably a subdirectory of the temporary directory you specified above.) Once there, run the Set_tmp_dir command again, and accept its default answer by pressing return at the prompt.

Use the Extract command to extract the distribution set. For instance, if you're extracting the base set, use the command:

       # Extract base

You will be asked if you wish the extraction to be verbose. If you reply affirmatively, the name of each file being extracted will be printed.

Repeat the previous two steps for each distribution set you wish to install. Change to the set's directory, run Set_tmp_dir, and then run Extract set_name to extract the set.

Once you are finished extracting all of the sets that you wish to install, you should proceed to the instructions below (after the last install medium type-specific instructions), that explain how you should configure your system.

To install via FTP or NFS

Configure the appropriate ethernet interface (e.g. ea0, eb0, etc.) up, with a command like:

ifconfig ifname ipaddr [netmask netmask]

where ifname is the interface name, like those listed above, and ipaddr is the numeric IP address of the interface. If the interface has a special netmask, supply the word netmask and that netmask at the end of the command line. (The brackets indicate that those arguments are optional.) For instance, to configure interface ea0 with IP address 129.133.10.10, use the command:

       # ifconfig ea0 129.133.10.10

and to configure interface eb0 with IP address 128.32.240.167 and a special netmask, 0xffffff00, use the command:

       # ifconfig eb0 128.32.240.167 netmask 0xffffff00

If the NFS server or FTP server is not on a directly- connected network, you need to set up a route to it using a command like:

route add default gate_ipaddr

where gate_ipaddr is your gateway's numeric IP address.

If you are NFS-mounting the distribution sets, mount them on the temporary directory with a command like:

mount -t nfs serv_ipaddr:dist_dir tmp_dir

where serv_ipaddr is the server's numeric IP address, dist_dir is the path to the distribution files on the server, and tmp_dir is the name of the local temporary directory.

Once this is done, proceed as if you had loaded the files from tape, changing to the appropriate directories, running Set_tmp_dir, and running Extract as appropriate.

If you are retrieving the distribution sets using ftp, change into the temporary directory, and execute the command:

ftp serv_ipaddr

where serv_ipaddr is once again the server's numeric IP address. Get the files with FTP, taking care to use binary mode when transferring the files.

Once you have all of the files for the distribution sets that you wish to install, you can proceed using the instructions above, as if you had installed from a floppy. (Note that as with the floppy install, if you're short on disk space, you can transfer only one set at a time, extract it, then delete it, to save space.)

To install from CD-ROM

       # mkdir /mnt/cdrom

If you get an error here of ``mkdir: /mnt/cdrom'', don't worry it just means that you didn't need to create the directory.

Then all you need to do is mount the CD-ROM. For the first CD-ROM drive use:

       # mount -rt cd9660 /dev/cd0a /mnt/cdrom

Or, for the second use:

       # mount -rt cd9660 /dev/cd1a /mnt/cdrom

Once this is done, extract the required sets as described in the To install from floppy section, but ensure that you set the temporary directory to the location of the sets on the CD-ROM (usually /cdrom/distrib, but check the release notes that came with the CD).

Completing your installation

Congratulations, you have successfully installed NetBSD1.5.

Post installation steps

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.

1. Configuring /etc/rc.conf

   If you or the installation software haven't done any configuration of /etc/rc.conf, 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-write. When the system asks you to choose a shell, simply press RETURN to get to a prompt. If you are asked for a terminal type, respond with vt220 (or whatever is appropriate for your terminal type) and press RETURN. At this point, you need to configure at least one file in the /etc directory. Change to the /etc directory and take a look at the /etc/rc.conf file. Modify it to your tastes, making sure that you set rc_configured=YES so that your changes will be enabled and a multi-user boot can proceed. Default values for the various programs can be found in /etc/defaults/rc.conf, where some in-line documentation may be found. More complete documentation can be found in rc.conf(5).

   If your /usr directory is on a separate partition and you do not know how to use ed, you will have to mount your /usr partition to gain access to ex or vi. Do the following:

   
          # mount /usr
   
          # export TERM=vt220
   

   If you have /var on a separate partition, you need to repeat that step for it. After that, you can edit /etc/rc.conf with vi(1). When you have finished, type exit at the prompt to leave the single-user shell and continue with the multi-user boot.

   Other values that need to be set in /etc/rc.conf for a networked environment are hostname and possibly defaultroute, furthermore add an ifconfig_int for your interface <int>, along the lines of

   
          ifconfig_de0="inet 123.45.67.89 netmask 255.255.255.0"
   

   or, if you have myname.my.dom in /etc/hosts:

   
          ifconfig_de0="inet myname.my.dom netmask 255.255.255.0"
   

   To enable proper hostname resolution, you will also want to add an /etc/resolv.conf file or (if you are feeling a little more adventurous) run named(8). See resolv.conf(5) or named(8) for more information.

   Other files in /etc that may require modification or setting up include /etc/mailer.conf, /etc/nsswitch.conf, and /etc/wscons.conf.

   For Digital DNARD machines you will need to edit /etc/ttys and change the console terminal type from vt100 to pc3.

2. Logging in

   After reboot, you can log in as root at the login prompt. There is no initial password, but if you're using the machine in a networked environment, you should create an account for yourself (see below) and protect it and the ``root'' account with good passwords. Unless you have connected an unusual terminal device as the console you can just press RETURN when it prompts for Terminal type? [...]

3. Adding accounts

   Use the useradd(8) command to add accounts to your system, do not edit /etc/passwd directly. See useradd(8) for more information on how to add a new user to the system.

4. The X Window System

   If you have installed the X window system, look at the files in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/doc for information.

   You will need to set up a configuration file, see /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config.eg for an example. The xf86config(1) utility can interactively create a first version of such a configuration file for you. See http://www.xfree86.org/ and the XFree86 manual page for more information.

   Don't forget to add /usr/X11R6/bin to your path in your shell's dot file so that you have access to the X binaries.

5. Installing third party packages

   If you wish to install any of the software freely available for UNIX-like systems you are strongly advised to first check the NetBSD package system. This automatically handles any changes necessary to make the software run on NetBSD, retrieval and installation of any other packages on which the software may depend, and simplifies installation (and deinstallation), both from source and precompiled binaries.

   • More information on the package system is at http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/software/packages.html

   • A browsable listing of available packages is at ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/pkgsrc/README.html

   • Precompiled binaries can be found at ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/

   • Package sources for compiling packages can be obtained by retrieving the file ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-current/tar_files/pkgsrc.tar.gz They are typically extracted into /usr/pkgsrc (though other locations work fine), as with the command:

     
            # mkdir /usr/pkgsrc; tar -C /usr/pkgsrc -zxpf pkgsrc.tar.gz
     

     After extracting, then see the README file in the extraction directory (e.g. /usr/pkgsrc/README) for more information.

6. Misc

   • Edit /etc/mail/aliases to forward root mail to the right place (run newaliases(1) afterwards.)

   • The /etc/mail/sendmail.cf file will almost definitely need to be adjusted; files aiding in this can be found in /usr/share/sendmail. See the README file there for more information.

   • Edit /etc/rc.local to run any local daemons you use.

   • Many of the /etc files are documented in section 5 of the manual; so just invoking

     
            # man 5 filename
     

     is likely to give you more information on these files.