The i386-specific portion of the NetBSD _VER release is found in the "i386" subdirectory of the distribution. That subdirectory is laid out as follows: .../NetBSD-_VER/i386/ INSTALL Installation notes; this file. binary/ i386 binary distribution sets; see below. floppies/ i386 boot and installation floppies; see below. security/ i386 security distribution; see below; utils/ Miscellaneous i386 installation utilities; see installation section, below. There an i386 floppy image named "boot-12G.fs" in the "i386/floppy" subdirectory of the NetBSD _VER distribution. It is bootable. This floppy is used both for installations and for upgrades. It is described in more detail below. There is also a gzipped version of this floppy named "boot-12G.fs.gz" available, for easier downloading. Bootable installation/upgrade floppy: This disk is bootable, and contains the software necessary to prepare your hard drive for NetBSD and install the NetBSD distribution, or to upgrading an already installed system from a previous version of NetBSD. Unlike previous NetBSD releases, there are no separate "kernel copy" floppies or "upgrade" floppies. Instead, the install floppy contains only a special compressed kernel with a built in ramdisk image of the installation/upgrade file system. There is also no longer any need to use a different boot floppy for Adaptec and Buslogic based systems. Because the kernel on the installation disk is not suitable for use beyond initial installation and configuration, a "generic" kernel has been placed in a distribution set named "kern12G". This kernel is intended to run your system while you build a custom kernel. It is strongly encouraged that you build a custom kernel for your installation rather than use the prebuilt generic kernel on a long term basis. Please note that because of space considerations the kernels booted from the installation floppies do not contain drivers that are not needed during installation -- in particular, no drivers needed to run the X Window System are available in these kernels. [NOTE: In this snapshot, the "boot-12G.fs" floppy lacks a copy of the driver for the Western Digital WD7000 SCSI controller. This is to permit the system to successfully boot on machines with four megabytes of memory. The wds driver, unfortunately, has a design defect that makes it take up very large amounts of statically allocated memory. This defect is being fixed in the near future and the driver will be on the NetBSD/i386 1.3 boot floppy. For the moment, if you are a Western Digital user, please either custom build a boot floppy for yourself, ask someone to build one for you, or wait for another snapshot.] The NetBSD/i386 binary distribution sets contain the binaries which comprise the NetBSD _VER release for the i386. There are eight binary distribution sets and the "security" distribution set. The binary distribution sets can be found in subdirectories of the "i386/binary" subdirectory of the NetBSD _VER distribution tree, and are as follows: base12G The NetBSD/i386 _VER base binary distribution. You MUST install this distribution set. It contains the base NetBSD utilities that are necessary for the system to run and be minimally functional. It includes shared library support, and excludes everything described below. [ 7.5M gzipped, 19.5M uncompressed ] comp12G The NetBSD/i386 Compiler tools. All of the tools relating to C, C++, and FORTRAN (yes, there are two!). This set includes the system include files (/usr/include), the linker, the compiler tool chain, 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. [ 4.9M gzipped, 15.0M uncompressed ] etc12G This distribution set contains the system configuration files that reside in /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. (If you are upgrading, it's recommended that you get a copy of this set and CAREFULLY upgrade your configuration files by hand.) [ 63K gzipped, 338K uncompressed ] games12G This set includes the games and their manual pages. [ 2.8M gzipped, 6.9M uncompressed ] kern12G This set contains a NetBSD/i386 _VER GENERIC kernel, named "/netbsd". You MUST install this distribution set. [ .8M gzipped, 1.7M uncompressed ] man12G This set includes all of the manual pages for the binaries and other software contained in the base set. Note that it does not include any of the manual pages that are included in the other sets. [ 0.8M gzipped, 3.4M uncompressed ] misc12G This set includes the system dictionaries (which are rather large), the typesettable document set, and man pages for other architectures which happen to be installed from the source tree by default. [ 1.9M gzipped, 6.6M uncompressed ] text12G This set includes NetBSD's text processing tools, including groff, all related programs, and their manual pages. [ 0.8M gzipped, 2.9M uncompressed ] IMPORTANT: In previous versions of NetBSD, the kernel from the install floppy was copied onto the hard drive in a special step. In the new install system, the kernel on the floppy is unsuited to being copied onto the hard drive. Instead, a new set, "kern", has been added which contains a generic kernel to be unloaded onto the drive. It must be extracted in order to have a minimally functioning system. The i386 security distribution set is named "secr12G" and can be found in the "i386/security" subdirectory of the NetBSD _VER distribution tree. It contains security related binaries which depend on cryptographic source code. You do not need this distribution set to use encrypted passwords in your password file; the "base12G" distribution includes a crypt library which can perform only the decryption function. The security distribution includes a version of the Kerberos IV network security system, and a Kerberized version of the "telnet" program. The "secr12G" distribution set can be found only on those sites which carry the complete NetBSD distribution and which can legally obtain it. (Remember, because of United States law, it may not be legal to distribute this set to locations outside of the United States and Canada.) [ 154K gzipped, 358K uncompressed ] The i386 binary distribution sets are distributed in the same form as the source distribution sets; catted together, the members of a set form a gzipped tar file. Each i386 binary distribution set also has its own "CKSUMS" file, just as the source distribution sets do. 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 files are extracted "below" the current directory. That is, if you want to extract the binaries "into" your system, i.e. replace the system binaries with them, you have to run the "tar xfp" from /. Also note that if you upgrade or install this way, those programs that you are using at the time will NOT be replaced. If you follow the normal installation or upgrade procedures, this will be taken care of for you.