INSTALLATION NOTES for NetBSD/_MACH _VER Be sure to read _ALL_ of this document before you try to install NetBSD/_MACH. What is NetBSD? ---- -- ------ The NetBSD Operating System is a fully functional UN*X-like system derrived from the Berkeley Networking Release 2 (Net/2), 4.4BSD-Lite, and 4.4BSD-Lite2 sources. NetBSD runs on many architectures and is being ported to more. NetBSD is a creation of the members of the Internet community. Without the unique cooperation and coordination the net makes possible, it's likely that this release wouldn't have come about. The NetBSD _VER release is a landmark. Building upon the successful NetBSD 1.2 release, we have provided numerous and significant functional enhancements, including support for many new devices, integration of many bug fixes, new and updated kernel subsystems, and many userland enhancements. The results of these improvements is a stable operating system fit for production use that rivals most commercially available systems. It is impossible to summarize the 18 months of development that went into the NetBSD _VER release. Some of the significant changes include: Support for machine independant device drivers has been radically improved with the addition of the "bus.h" interface, providing a high quality abstraction for machine and architecture independent device access. The bus_dma interface has also been integrated, providing a machine-independent abstraction for DMA mapping. This permits many good things, including (among many) clean multi-platform bounce buffer support. Framework support for ISA "Plug and Play" has been added, as well as support for numerous "Plug and Play" devices. APM support has been added to NetBSD/i386. An initial cut of multiplatform PCMCIA support has been added. Support for ATAPI devices (initially just ATAPI CD-ROM drives) has been added. Support for Sun 3/80s (sun3x architecture) has been added. Support for R4000 DECstations has been added. Integration/merger of 4.4BSD Lite-2 sources into userland programs has nearly been completed. Most of userland now compiles with high levels of gcc warnings turned on, which has lead to the discovery and elimination of many bugs. The i386 boot blocks have been completely replaced with a new, libsa based two stage boot system. This has permitted integration of compressed boot support (see below). Many ports now support booting of compressed kernels, and feature new "Single Floppy" install systems that boot compressed install kernels and ramdisks. We intend to do substantial work on improving ease of installation in the future. "ypserv" has been added, thus completing our support for the "yp" network information system suite. Support for the Linux "ext2fs" filesystem and for FAT32 "msdosfs" filesystems has been added. TCP now has a SYN "compressed state engine" which provides increased robustness under high levels of received SYNs (as in the case of "SYN flood" attacks.) (Much of this code was derived from sources provided by BSDI.) An initial implementation of Path MTU discovery has been integrated (though it is not turned on by default). An initial kernel based random number generator pseudodevice has been added. Several major fixes have been integrated for the VM subsystem, including the fix of a notorious VM leak, improved synchronization between mmap()ed and open()ed files, and massively improved performance in low real memory conditions. A new swap subsystem has radically improved configuration and management of swap devices and adds swapping to files. Userland ntp support, including xntpd, has been integrated. The audio subsystems have been substantially debugged and improved, and now offer substantial emulation of the OSS audio interface, thus providing the ability to cleanly run emulated Linux and FreeBSD versions of sound intensive programs. A "packages" system has been adapted from FreeBSD and will provide binary package installations for third party applications. The XFree86 X source tree has been made a supported part of the NetBSD distribution, and X servers (if built for this port), libraries and utilities are now shipped with our releases. The ftp(1) program has been made astoundingly overfunctional. It supports command line editing, tab completion, status bars, automatic download of URLs specified on the command line, firewall support and many other features. All ports now use "new" config. Old config has been laid to rest. The arp subsystem and API has been rewritten to detach it from being very ethernet-centric. Many kernel interface manuals have been written and added to manual section 9. Several ports support much more hardware. Many updates to bring NetBSD closer to standards compliance. Most third party packages have been updated to the latest stable release. As has been noted, there have also been innumerable bug fixes. Kernel interfaces have continued to be refined, and more subsystems and device drivers are shared among the different ports. You can look for this trend to continue. NetBSD _VER also includes some refinement to the NetBSD binary emulation system (which includes FreeBSD, HP-UX, iBCS2, Linux, OSF/1, SunOS, SVR4, Solaris and Ultrix compatibility), bringing NetBSD closer to the goal of making the emulation as accurate as possible. In the near future, we hope to integrate a fully rewritten Virtual Memory subsystem, kernel threads, and SMP support. #include "whatis" The Future of NetBSD: --- ------ -- ------ The NetBSD Foundation has been incorporated as a non-profit organization. Its purpose is to encourage, foster and promote the free exchange of computer software, namely the NetBSD Operating System. The foundation will allow for many things to be handled more smoothly than could be done with our previous informal organization. In particular, it provides the framework to deal with other parties that wish to become involved in the NetBSD Project. The NetBSD Foundation will help improve the quality of NetBSD by: * providing better organization to keep track of development efforts, including co-ordination with groups working in related fields. * providing a framework to receive donations of goods and services and to own the resources necessary to run the NetBSD Project. * providing a better position from which to undertake promotional activities. * periodically organizing workshops for developers and other interested people to discuss ongoing work. We hope to have regular releases of the full binary and source trees, but these are difficult to coordinate, especially with all of the architectures which we now support! We hope to support even _more_ hardware in the future, and have a rather large number of other ideas about what can be done to improve NetBSD. We intend to continue our current practice of making the NetBSD-current development source available on a daily basis. We intend to integrate free, positive changes from whatever sources will provide them, providing that they are well thought-out and increase the usability of the system. Above all, we hope to create a stable and accessible system, and to be responsive to the needs and desires of NetBSD users, because it is for and because of them that NetBSD exists. Sources of NetBSD: ------- -- ------ #include "mirrors" NetBSD _VER Release Contents: ------ --- ------- -------- The NetBSD _VER release is organized in the following way: .../NetBSD-_VER/ BUGS Known bugs list (incomplete and out of date). CHANGES Changes since NetBSD's last release (and before). LAST_MINUTE Last minute changes. MIRRORS A list of sites that mirror the NetBSD _VER distribution. README.files README describing the distribution's contents. TODO NetBSD's todo list (incomplete and out of date). patches/ Post-release source code patches. source/ Source distribution sets; see below. In addition to the files and directories listed above, there is one directory per architecture, for each of the architectures for which NetBSD _VER has a binary distribution. There are also 'README.export-control' files sprinkled liberally throughout the distribution tree, which point out that there are some portions of the distribution (i.e. the `domestic' portion) that may be subject to export regulations of the United States, and that it is your responsibility should you choose to export these portions. 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: dsrc13 This set contains the "domestic" sources. These sources may be subject to United States export regulations. [ 140K gzipped, 655K uncompressed ] /* XXX */ gsrc13 This set contains the "gnu" sources, including the source for the compiler, assembler, groff, and the other GNU utilities in the binary distribution sets. [ 7.1M gzipped, 30.4M uncompressed ] /* XXX */ ksrc13 This set contains the sources to the NetBSD _VER kernel, config(8), and dbsym(8). [ 6.0M gzipped, 27.0M uncompressed ] /* XXX */ ssrc13 This set contains the "share" sources, which include the sources for the man pages not associated with any particular program, the sources for the typesettable document set, the dictionaries, and more. [ 2.4M gzipped, 8.9M uncompressed ] /* XXX */ src13 This set contains all of the NetBSD _VER sources which are not mentioned above. [ 9.3M gzipped, 41.6M uncompressed ] /* XXX */ It is worth noting that unless all of the source distribution sets are installed (except the domestic set), you can't rebuild and install the system from scratch, straight out of the box. However, all that is required to rebuild the system in that case is a trivial modification to one Makefile. The source distribution sets are distributed as groups of files named "set_name.xx" where "set_name" is the distribution set name, and "xx" is the sequence number of the file, starting with "aa" for the first file in the distribution set, then "ab" for the next, and so on. All of these files except the last one of each set should be exactly 240,640 bytes long. (The last file is just long enough to contain the remainder of the data for that distribution set.) Catted together, the files belonging to a source distribution set comprise a gzipped tar file. If you want to look at list of the files contained in the set, you could use the command: cat set_name.?? | gunzip | tar tvf - or to actually extract the files contained in the set: cat set_name.?? | gunzip | tar xfp - In each of the source distribution set directories, there is a file named "CKSUMS" which contains the checksums of the files in that directory, as generated by the cksum(1) utility. You can use cksum to check the integrity of the archives, if you suspect that one of the files is corrupt and have access to a cksum binary. #include "contents" NetBSD System Requirements and Supported Devices: ------ ------ ------------ --- --------- ------- #include "hardware" Getting the NetBSD System on to Useful Media: ------- --- ------ ------ -- -- ------ ----- #include "xfer" Preparing your System for NetBSD Installation: --------- ---- ------ --- ------ ------------ #include "prep" Installing the NetBSD System: ---------- --- ------ ------ #include "install" Upgrading a previously-installed NetBSD System: --------- - ---------- --------- ------ ------ #include "upgrade" Using online NetBSD documentation ----- ------ ------ ------------- Documentation is available if you first install the manual distribution set. Traditionally, the "man pages" (documentation) are denoted by 'name(section)'. Some examples of this are intro(1), man(1), apropros(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 least-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. Administrivia: ------------- Registration? What's that? 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 . To get help on using the mailing list server, send mail to that address with an empty body, and it will reply with instructions. 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' command shipped with NetBSD, and fill in as much information about the problem as you can. Good bug reports include lots of details. Additionally, bug reports can be sent by mail to: netbsd-bugs@NetBSD.ORG Use of 'send-pr' is encouraged, however, because bugs reported with it are entered into the NetBSD bugs database, and thus can't slip through the cracks. There are also port-specific mailing lists, to discuss aspects of each port of NetBSD. Use majordomo to find their addresses. 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 this effort, and have an idea as to how you could be useful, send mail and/or subscribe to: netbsd-help@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 somewhere, then mail the appropriate list about it, or, if you'd rather not do that, mail the list saying you'll send the data to those who want it. Thanks go to: ------ -- -- Members and former members of UCB's Computer Systems Research Group, including (but not limited to): Keith Bostic Ralph Campbell Mike Karels Marshall Kirk McKusick for their ongoing work on BSD systems, support, and encouragement. Also, our thanks go to: Mike Hibler Rick Macklem Jan-Simon Pendry Chris Torek for answering lots of questions, fixing bugs, and doing the various work they've done. UC Berkeley's Experimental Computing Facility provided a home for sun-lamp in the past, people to look after it, and a sense of humor. Rob Robertson, too, has added his unique sense of humor to things, and for a long time provided the primary FTP site for NetBSD. Best Internet Communications for hosting the NetBSD FTP and SUP server. Cygnus Support for hosting the NetBSD Mail server. Without CVS, this project would be impossible to manage, so our hats go off to Brian Berliner, Jeff Polk, and the various other people who've had a hand in making CVS a useful tool. Dave Burgess has been maintaining the 386BSD/NetBSD/FreeBSD FAQ for quite some time, and deserves to be recognized for it. The following people (in alphabetical order) have made donations or loans of hardware and/or money, to support NetBSD development, and deserve credit for it: #include "donations" (If you're not on that list and should be, tell us! We probably were not able to get in touch with you, to verify that you wanted to be listed.) Finally, we thank all of the people who've put sweat and tears into developing NetBSD since its inception in January, 1993. (Obviously, there are a lot more people who deserve thanks here. If you're one of them, and would like to mentioned, tell us!) We are: -- --- (in alphabetical order) The NetBSD core group: J.T. Conklin Charles Hannum Paul Kranenburg Jason Thorpe Christos Zoulas The port-masters (and their ports): Mark Brinicombe (arm32) Jeremy Cooper (sun3x) Chuck Cranor (mvme68k) Charles Hannum (i386) Chris Hopps (amiga) Paul Kranenburg (sparc) Anders Magnusson (vax) Phil Nelson (pc532) Masaru Oki (x68k) Scott Reynolds (mac68k) Gordon Ross (sun3, sun3x) Jonathan Stone (pmax) Jason Thorpe (hp300) Frank van der Linden (i386) Leo Weppelman (atari) Supporting cast: Steve Allen Lennart Augustsson Christoph Badura John Birrell Manuel Bouyer John Brezak Allen Briggs Aaron Brown David Brownlee Simon Burge Dave Burgess Dave Carrel Bill Coldwell Alistair Crooks Rob Deker Chris G. Demetriou Matthias Drochner Bernd Ernesti Erik Fair Hubert Feyrer Brian R. Gaeke Justin Gibbs Adam Glass Michael Graff Brad Grantham Matthew Green Juergen Hannken-Illjes Michael L. Hitch Marc Horowitz Matthew Jacob Lonhyn T. Jasinskyj Lawrence Kesteloot Klaus Klein John Kohl Kevin Lahey Ted Lemon Mike Long Paul Mackerras SAITOH Masanobu Neil J. McRae Perry Metzger Luke Mewburn der Mouse Herb Peyerl Matthias Pfaller Chris Provenzano Waldi Ravens Darren Reed Kazuki Sakamoto Curt Sampson Wilfredo Sanchez Karl Schilke (rAT) Thor Lancelot Simon Noriyuki Soda Wolfgang Solfrank Bill Sommerfeld Ignatios Souvatzis Bill Studenmund Kevin Sullivan Matt Thomas Enami Tsugutomo Todd Vierling Paul Vixie Colin Wood Steve Woodford Legal Mumbo-jumbo: ----- ----- ----- The following notices are required to satisfy the license terms of the software that we have mentioned in this document: #include "legal.common" #include "legal"