NetBSD/distrib/notes/mac68k/prep

.\"	$NetBSD: prep,v 1.12 2002/06/29 23:54:05 lukem Exp $
.
Find your favorite disk partitioning utility.
Any formatter capable of partitioning a SCSI disk should work.
Some of the ones that have been tried and seem to work are:
.Pp
.(bullet -compact -offset indent
Apple HD SC Setup
.It
Hard Disk ToolKit from FWB
.It
SCSI Director Lite
.It
Disk Manager Mac from OnTrack
.It
Silverlining from LaCie
.It
APS Disk Tools
.bullet)
.Pp
Apple's HD SC Setup is probably the easiest to use and the most commonly
available.
Instructions for patching HD SC Setup so that it will recognize
non-Apple drives is available at:
.Pp
.Lk http://www.euronet.nl/users/ernstoud/patch.html
.Pp
First, you need to choose a drive on which to install
.Nx .
Try to pick a
drive with a low SCSI-ID number, especially if you are likely to add or
remove drives to your SCSI chain in the future.
.(Note
Be sure you have a reliable backup of any data which you may want to keep.
Repartitioning your hard drive is an excellent way to destroy important data.
.Note)
.Pp
Second, decide how you want to set up your partitions.
At minimum, you need a partition to hold the
.Nx
installation (the root partition \(em
.Pa / )
and a
partition to serve as swap.
You may choose to use more than one partition to hold the installation.
This allows you to separate the more vital portions of the file system
(such as the kernel and the
.Pa /etc
directory) from the more volatile parts of the file system.
Typical setups place the
.Pa /usr
directory on a separate partition from the root partition
.Pq Pa / .
Generally,
.Pa /
can be fairly small while the
.Pa /usr
partition should be fairly large.
If you plan to use this machine as a server, you may also want a separate
.Pa /var
partition.
.Pp
Once you have decided how to lay out your partitions, you need to calculate
how much space to allocate to each partition.
A minimal install of
.Nx
(i.e.
.Pa netbsd.tgz , base.tgz , No and
.Pa etc.tgz )
should just fit in a 32 MB partition.
For a full installation, you should allocate at least 95 MB (150 MB if you
wish to install the X sets as well).
A general rule of thumb for sizing the swap partition is to allocate
twice as much swap space as you have real memory.
Having your swap + real memory total at least 20 MB is also a good idea.
Systems that will be heavily used or that are low on real
memory should have more swap space allocated.
Systems that will be only lightly used or have a very large amount
of real memory can get away with less.
.Pp
Keep in mind that
.Nx
currently requires
.Tn MacOS
in order to boot, so it is likely that you will
want to keep at least a minimal install of
.Tn MacOS
around on an HFS
partition for this purpose.
The size of this partition may vary depending on the size requirements
for the version of
.Tn MacOS
you are using.
Of course, if you have
.Tn MacOS
on another hard drive or can boot from a floppy,
feel free to dedicate the entire drive to
.Nx .
.Pp
Next, use your favorite partitioning utility to make partitions of the
necessary sizes.
You can use any type of partition, but partitions of type
.Li "Apple_Free"
might save you some confusion in the future.
.Pp
You are now set to install
.Nx
on your hard drive.