About this Document What is NetBSD? Changes Between The NetBSD 8 and 9 Releases Installation and Partitioning Changes Features to be removed in a later release The NetBSD Foundation Sources of NetBSD NetBSD 9.3 Release Contents NetBSD/emips subdirectory structure Binary distribution sets NetBSD/emips System Requirements and Supported Devices Supported machines Supported devices Getting the NetBSD System on to Useful Media Preparing your System for NetBSD installation Installing the NetBSD System Install via a NetBSD CD-ROM Installing from an existing system Install via diskimage Install via netboot install kernel Install via diskless boot Once you've booted the diskimage Running the sysinst installation program Introduction Possible hardware problems General Quick install Booting NetBSD Network configuration Installation drive selection and parameters Selecting which sets to install Partitioning the disk Preparing your hard disk Getting the distribution sets Installation from CD-ROM Installation using FTP Installation using NFS Installation from an unmounted file system Installation from a local directory Extracting the distribution sets Configure additional items Finalizing your installation Post installation steps Upgrading a previously-installed NetBSD System Compatibility Issues With Previous NetBSD Releases Using online NetBSD documentation Administrivia Thanks go to Legal Mumbo-Jumbo The End
This document describes the installation procedure for
NetBSD
9.3 on the
emips
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 many different different system architectures (ports) across a variety of distinct CPU families, and is being ported to more. The NetBSD 9.3 release contains complete binary releases for most of these system architectures, with preliminary support for the others included in source form. Please see the NetBSD website 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, NetBSD would not exist.
The NetBSD 9.3 release provides many significant changes, including support for many new devices, hundreds of bug fixes, new and updated kernel subsystems, and numerous userland 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 the massive development that
went into the
NetBSD
9.3 release.
The complete list of changes can be found in the following files:
CHANGES
CHANGES-9.1
CHANGES-9.2
CHANGES-9.3
files in the top level directory of the NetBSD 9.3 release tree.
It now supports arbitrary big disks and offers GPT partitions as alternative to MBR/fdisk partitions on a lot architectures.
Unfortunately it has not been tested on all hardware supported by NetBSD. If you have problems partitioning the target disk or installing the system, please report bugs with as much details as possible. See the Administrivia section below on how to report bugs or contact other users and ask for support.
groff(1).
Man pages are now handled with
mandoc(1),
and
groff(1)
can still be found in pkgsrc as
textproc/groff.
The
NetBSD
Foundation is a tax exempt, not-for-profit 501(c)(3) corporation
that devotes itself to the traditional goals and Spirit of the
NetBSD
Project and owns the trademark of the word
``NetBSD''.
It supports the design, development, and adoption of
NetBSD
worldwide.
More information on the
NetBSD
Foundation, its composition, aims, and work can be found at:
https://www.NetBSD.org/foundation/
Refer to
mirrors
The root directory of the NetBSD 9.3 release is organized as follows:
.../NetBSD-9.3/
CHANGESCHANGES-9.0CHANGES-9.1CHANGES-9.2CHANGES-9.3CHANGES.prevLAST_MINUTEREADME.filesimages/source/In addition to the files and directories listed above, there is one directory per architecture, for each of the architectures for which NetBSD 9.3 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)
utility.
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:
MD5SHA512The SHA512 digest is safer, but MD5 checksums are provided so that a wider range of operating systems can check the integrity of the release files.
emips
subdirectory of the distribution:
.../NetBSD-9.3/emips/.
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/misc/emips/binary/sets
subdirectory
of the
NetBSD
9.3
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.
/rescue.
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 X.Org. Binary sets for the X Window System are distributed with NetBSD. The sets are:
The emips 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 -xzpf
command from the root directory (
/
) of your system.
The minimal configuration requires 8 MB of RAM and ~170 MB of disk space. To install the entire system requires in excess of 800 MB of disk space, for any serious work at least 64 MB of RAM is recommended. The processor can address the full 4 GB of physical space, but configurations with more than 256 MB of RAM are currently untested.
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
emips/binary/sets.
(You only need to know this if you are mixing installer and installation
media from different versions - the installer will know the proper
default location for the sets it comes with).
Proceed to the instructions on installation.
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_sets
where
tape_device
is the name of the tape device that
represents the tape drive you're using.
This might be
/dev/rst0,
or something similar, but it will vary from system to system.
In the above example,
dist_sets
is a list of filenames corresponding to the distribution sets that you
wish to place on the tape.
For instance, to put the
kern-GENERIC, base, and etc
distributions on tape (the absolute minimum required for installation),
you would do the following:
# cd .../NetBSD-9.3
# cd emips/binary
# tar -cf tape_device kern-GENERIC.tgz base.tgz etc.tgz
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.
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.
Mistakes in partitioning your hard disk may lead to data loss.
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.
From most convenient to least convenient, the installation methods are:
/).
See the
Installing from an existing system
section later in these INSTALL notes.
You should familiarize yourself with the hardware configuration on your machine or simulator. Be sure you know how to print the configuration of your machine, and how to boot from disk or network, as appropriate.
To boot from disk, use:
To boot via TFTP, use
You will also need to know the total size (in sectors) and the approximate geometry of the disks you are installing onto, so that you can label your disks for the BSD fast file system (FFS). The kernel should correctly detect the disk geometry. The sysinst tool will suggest these as the default.
If you're installing NetBSD/emips for the first time it's a very good idea to pre-plan partition sizes for the disks on which you're installing NetBSD. Changing the size of partitions after you've installed is difficult. If you do not have a spare bootable disk, it may be simpler to re-install NetBSD again from scratch.
Assuming a classic partition scheme with separate
/
(root)
and
/usr
file systems, a comfortable size for the
NetBSD
/
partition is about 64 MB.
A good initial size for the swap partition is twice the
amount of physical memory in your machine.
The default swap size is 64 MB, which
is adequate for doing a full system build.
A full binary installation, with X11R7 takes about 700 MB in
/usr;
a 1 GB
/usr
should be ample.
To mount the CD-ROM from a NetBSD/emips host, type
# mount -r -t cd9660 /dev/cdXc /mnt
where X is the ID of the CD-ROM.
The diskimage file can be found on the CD-ROM at the following location (relative to the mount point of the CD)
emips/installation/diskimage/diskimage.gz
and the diskless boot tar file can be found at
emips/installation/netboot/diskimage.tgz
Once you have located these files, continue on to either Install via netboot install kernel, Install via diskless boot, Install via diskimage or Installing from an existing system section later in the INSTALL notes.
Using the bootloader you can boot the kernel located in:
emips/binary/kernel/netbsd-INSTALL.gz
Then boot using:
then continue to the Once you've booted the diskimage section
emips/installation/diskimage/diskimage.gz.
It is shipped compressed and is around 1620 kbytes, uncompressing to exactly 2100 kbytes.
To install the diskimage onto disk
aceX
on a
NetBSD/emips
system, do:
# disklabel -W /dev/raceXc
# gunzip -c diskimage.gz | dd of=/dev/raceXc bs=10240
On
NetBSD/i386,
the
``raw disk partition''
is the
`d'
partition, so do:
# disklabel -W /dev/rsdXd
# gunzip -c diskimage.gz | dd of=/dev/rsdXd bs=10240
On NetBSD, be sure to use disklabel -W to enable writing to the label area of the disk. If you forget this and/or use the `block' device, the dd command may silently fail.
Then boot using:
then continue to the Once you've booted the diskimage section.
You will need to set up servers for BOOTP and TFTP.
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=08002b123456:\
:ip=192.168.1.2:sm=255.255.255.0:\
:sa=192.168.1.1:bf=netbsd-INSTALL:\
:rp=/usr/export/emips:
And here's an example for a UNIX-like system running the ISC dhcpd:
host emips {
hardware ethernet 08:0:2b:12:34:56;
fixed-address 192.168.1.2;
option host-name "myhost.mydom.com";
filename "netbsd-INSTALL";
option domain-name-servers 192.168.1.1;
option broadcast-address 255.255.255.0;
option domain-name "my.domain";
option root-path "/usr/export/emips";
}
For the TFTP server, You will need to copy the netbsd-INSTALL kernel to the directory used by the TFTP server.
Then boot using TFTP as described earlier.
and continue to the Once you've booted the diskimage section.
emips/installation/netboot/diskimage.tar.gz
contains a suitable set of files for installing on an NFS server to set
up a diskless root filesytem.
(It is a tar copy of the contents of an
installation ramdisk file system contained in the install kernel.)
You will need to find an NFS server, unpack the tarfile, and setup
BOOTP/dhcp service for your emips.
Instructions for setting up an NFS server and diskless booting are on the
NetBSD/emips
netboot
webpage at
Since the system install utility, sysinst, requires a read/write root, installing via diskless boot is only feasible if your NFS server exports the diskless root read-write. If this is not possible, you should install via other of the other installation procedures.
Once you have booted the kernel, continue to the Once you've booted the diskimage section.
tip(1)
or
cu(1)
connection running in an
xterm(1).
The system will then start the sysinst program.
Using sysinst, installing NetBSD is a relatively easy process. Still, you should read this document and have it available during the installation process. This document tries to be a good guide to 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
installing
NetBSD
on your hard disk.
sysinst
is a menu driven program that guides you through the installation process.
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 / DVD as the install media.
.***********************************************.
* NetBSD-9.3 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 *
* f: Config menu *
* x: Exit Install System *
.***********************************************.
root
user when prompted by
sysinst,
logging in as
root
and setting a password should be your first task.
You are also advised to read
afterboot(8).
Boot your machine. The boot loader will start, which 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 SATA/PATA 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 do not intend to use networking 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 when asked to provide a server.
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.
You should see disk names like
sd0
or
sd1.
The next step is to choose which distribution sets you wish to install. Options are provided for full, minimal, and custom installations. If you choose sets on your own, base, etc, and a kernel must be selected.
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, sysinst will check for the presence of other operating systems and you will be asked to confirm that you want to overwrite these.
The partition table of the NetBSD part of a disk is called a disklabel. If your disk already has a disklabel written to it, you can choose Use existing partition sizes. Otherwise, select Set sizes of NetBSD partitions.
After you have chosen your partitions and their sizes (or if you opted to use the existing partitions), you will be presented with the layout of the NetBSD disklabel and given one more 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, select yes.
The install program will now label your disk and create 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 tar files. At this point, 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 transfer the sets to your hard disk, others will extract the sets directly.
For all these methods, the first step is to make the sets available for extraction. The sets can be made available in a few different ways. The following sections describe each of the methods. After reading about the method you will be using, you can continue to the section labeled `Extracting the distribution sets'.
When installing from a CD-ROM, you will be asked to specify
the device name for your CD-ROM drive
(usually cd0)
and the directory name on the CD-ROM where the distribution files are.
sysinst will then check that the files are actually present in the specified location and proceed to the extraction of the sets.
To install using ftp, you first need to configure
your network setup if you haven't already done so.
sysinst
will help you with this, asking if you want to use DHCP.
If you do not use DHCP, you can enter network configuration
details yourself.
If you do not have DNS set up for the machine that you
are installing on, you can just press
RETURN
in answer to this question, 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, you will need to specify an IP address instead of a hostname for the ftp server.
sysinst will then transfer the set files from the remote site to your hard disk.
To install using NFS, you first need to configure
your network setup if you haven't already done so.
sysinst
will do this for you, asking you
if you want to use DHCP.
If you do not use DHCP, you can enter network configuration
details yourself.
If you do not have DNS set up for the machine that you
are installing on, you can just press
RETURN
in answer to this question, 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, you will need to specify an IP address instead of a hostname for the NFS server.
In order to install from a local file system, you will
need to specify the device that the file system resides
on
(for example wd1e),
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.
A progress bar will be displayed while the distribution sets are being extracted.
After all the files have been extracted, the 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 a number of additional items to configure, including the time zone that you're in, to make sure your clock has the right offset from UTC, the root user's shell, and the initial root password.
You can also enable installation of binary packages, which installs the
pkgin(1)
tool for managing binary packages for third-party software.
This will
feel familiar to users of package tools such as
apt-get
or
yum.
If you prefer to install third-party software from source, you can install
the
pkgsrc(7)
tree.
Finally, you can enable some daemons such as
sshd(8),
ntpd(8),
or
mdnsd(8).
Congratulations, you have successfully installed NetBSD 9.3. You can now reboot the machine and boot NetBSD from hard disk.
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. The most important steps are described below.
postinstall(8).
/etc/rc.conf
If you or the installation software haven't done any configuration of
/etc/rc.conf
(sysinst
normally 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:
# stty erase '^h'
# stty erase '^?'
At this point, you need to configure at least
one file in the
/etc
directory.
You will need to mount your root file system read/write with:
# /sbin/mount -u -w /
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).
When you have finished editing
/etc/rc.conf,
type
exit
at the prompt to
leave the single-user shell and continue with the multi-user boot.
Other values that may need to be set in
/etc/rc.conf
for a networked environment are
hostname
and possibly
defaultroute.
You may also need to add an
ifconfig_int
for your
<int>
network interface,
along the lines of
ifconfig_le0="inet 192.0.2.123 netmask 255.255.255.0"
or, if you have
myname.my.dom
in
/etc/hosts:
ifconfig_le0="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.
Instead of manually configuring networking,
DHCP can be used by setting
dhcpcd=YES
in
/etc/rc.conf.
After reboot, you can log in as
root
at the login prompt.
If you didn't set a password in
sysinst,
there
is no initial password.
You should create an account for yourself (see below) and protect it and the
``root''
account with good passwords.
By default, root login from the network is disabled (even via
ssh(1)).
One way to become root over the network is to log in as a different
user that belongs to group
``wheel''
(see
group(5))
and use
su(1)
to become root.
Use the
useradd(8)
command to add accounts to your system.
Do not
edit
/etc/passwd
directly! See
vipw(8)
and
pwd_mkdb(8)
if you want to edit the password database.
If you installed the X Window System, you may want to read the chapter about X in the NetBSD Guide:
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, pkgsrc. pkgsrc automatically handles any changes necessary to make the software run on NetBSD. This includes the retrieval and installation of any other packages the software may depend upon.
emips/9.3/All
subdir.
If you installed
pkgin(1)
in the
sysinst
post-installation configuration menu, you can use it to automatically install
binary packages over the network.
Assuming that
/usr/pkg/etc/pkgin/repositories.conf
is correctly configured, you can install them with the following commands:
# pkgin install tcsh # pkgin install bash # pkgin install perl # pkgin install apache # pkgin install kde # pkgin install firefox ...
/pub/pkgsrc
directory.
The above commands will install the Tenex-csh and Bourne Again shells, the Perl programming language, Apache web server, KDE desktop environment and the Firefox web browser as well as all the packages they depend on.
pkgsrc(7)
framework for compiling packages can be obtained by
retrieving the file
/usr/pkgsrc
(though other locations work fine) with the commands:
# cd /usr
# tar -zxpf pkgsrc.tar.gz
After extracting, see the
doc/pkgsrc.txt
file in the extraction directory (e.g.,
/usr/pkgsrc/doc/pkgsrc.txt)
for more information.
/etc/mail/aliases
to forward root mail to the right place.
Don't forget to run
newaliases(1)
afterwards.
/etc/rc.local
to run any local daemons you use.
/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.
The easiest way to upgrade to NetBSD 9.3 is with binaries, and that is the method documented here.
To do the upgrade, you must have one form of boot media available. You must also have at least the base and kern binary distribution sets available. Finally, you must have sufficient disk space available to install the new binaries. Since files already installed on the system are overwritten in place, you only need additional free space for files which weren't previously installed or to account for growth of the sets between releases.
Since upgrading involves replacing the kernel, boot blocks, and most of the system binaries, it has the potential to cause data loss. You are strongly advised to back up any important data on the NetBSD partition or on another operating system's partition on your disk before beginning the upgrade process.
The upgrade procedure is similar to an installation, but without the hard disk partitioning.
Fetching the binary sets is done in the same manner as the installation procedure; refer to the installation part of the document for help. File systems are checked before unpacking the sets.
After a new kernel has been copied to your hard disk, your
machine is a complete
NetBSD
9.3
system.
However, that doesn't mean that you're finished with the upgrade process.
You will probably want to update the set of device nodes you have in
/dev.
If you've changed the contents of
/dev
by hand, you will need to be careful about this, but if
not, you can just cd into
/dev,
and run the command:
# sh MAKEDEV all
sysinst
will attempt to merge the settings stored in your
/etc
directory with the new version of
NetBSD
using the
postinstall(8)
utility.
However,
postinstall(8)
is only able to deal with changes that are easily automated.
It is recommended that you use the
etcupdate(8)
tool to merge any remaining configuration changes.
Users upgrading from previous versions of NetBSD may wish to bear the following problems and compatibility issues in mind when upgrading to NetBSD 9.3.
Note that sysinst will automatically invoke
postinstall fix
A number of things have been removed from the NetBSD 9.3 release. See the ``Components removed from NetBSD'' section near the beginning of this document for a list.
Documentation is available if you installed the manual
distribution set.
Traditionally, the
``man pages''
(documentation) are denoted by
`name(section)'.
Some examples of this are
intro(1),
man(1),
apropos(1),
passwd(1),
and
passwd(5).
The section numbers group the topics into several categories, but three are of primary interest: user commands are in section 1, file formats are in section 5, and administrative information is in section 8.
The man command is used to view the documentation on a topic, and is started by entering man [section] topic. The brackets [] around the section should not be entered, but rather indicate that the section is optional. If you don't ask for a particular section, the topic with the lowest numbered section name will be displayed. For instance, after logging in, enter
# man passwd
to read the documentation for
passwd(1).
To view the documentation for
passwd(5),
enter
# man 5 passwd
instead.
If you are unsure of what man page you are looking for, enter
# apropos subject-word
where subject-word is your topic of interest; a list of possibly related man pages will be displayed.
If you've got something to say, do so!
We'd like your input.
There are various mailing lists available via the mailing list
server at
majordomo@NetBSD.org.
See
https://www.NetBSD.org/mailinglists/
for details.
There are various mailing lists set up to deal with comments and questions about this release. Please send comments to: netbsd-comments@NetBSD.org.
To report bugs, use the
send-pr(1)
command shipped with
NetBSD,
and fill in as much information about the problem as you can.
Good bug reports include lots of details.
Bugs also can be submitted and queried with the web interface at
https://www.NetBSD.org/support/send-pr.html
There are also port-specific mailing lists, to discuss aspects of
each port of
NetBSD.
Use majordomo to find their addresses, or visit
https://www.NetBSD.org/mailinglists/
If you're interested in doing a serious amount of work on a specific port, you probably should contact the `owner' of that port (listed below).
If you'd like to help with NetBSD, and have an idea as to how you could be useful, send us mail or subscribe to: netbsd-users@NetBSD.org.
As a favor, please avoid mailing huge documents or files to these mailing lists. Instead, put the material you would have sent up for FTP or WWW somewhere, then mail the appropriate list about it. If you'd rather not do that, mail the list saying you'll send the data to those who want it.
Keith Bostic Ralph Campbell Mike Karels Marshall Kirk McKusick
for their work on BSD systems, support, and encouragement.
All product names mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
The following notices are required to satisfy the license terms of the software that we have mentioned in this document:
NetBSD is a registered trademark of The NetBSD Foundation, Inc.
In the following statement, the phrase ``this text'' refers to portions
of the system documentation.
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form in
NetBSD, from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2004 Edition, Standard for
Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX),
The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6, Copyright (C) 2001-2004 by the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group.
In the event of any discrepancy between these versions and the original
IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group
Standard is the referee document.
The original Standard can be obtained online at
http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html.
This notice shall appear on any product containing this material.
In the following statement, "This software" refers to the parallel port driver:
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ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
Carnegie Mellon requests users of this software to return to
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rights to redistribute these changes.
Some files have the following copyright:
Author: Chris G. Demetriou
Permission to use, copy, modify and distribute this software and
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CONDITION. CARNEGIE MELLON DISCLAIMS ANY LIABILITY OF ANY KIND
FOR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
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School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh PA 15213-3890
Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and
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