The alpha-specific portion of the NetBSD _VER release is found in the "alpha" subdirectory of the distribution. That subdirectory is laid out as follows: .../NetBSD-_VER/alpha/ INSTALL Installation notes; this file. binary/ sets/ alpha binary distribution sets; see below. security/ alpha security distribution; see below. kernel/ alpha kernels; see below. toolchain/ alpha toolchain; see below. installation/ floppy/ alpha boot and installation floppies; see below. source/ toolchain/ Toolchain source code; see below. Bootable installation/upgrade floppies: There is a bootable floppy disk image available which 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. Because the kernel on the installation disks is not suitable for use beyond initial installation and configuration, a "generic" kernel has been placed in a distribution set named "kern". 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. The alpha toolchain: The toolchain (compiler, assembler, linker, etc.) for the alpha port is not yet integrated into the main NetBSD source tree, so the binaries for it are still distributed separately. A tar file with the toolchain can be found under binaries/toolchain, and the source can be found under source/toolchain. The toolchain installs under usr/local; to install it, just cd to the root directory and type tar -x -z --unlink -f /path/to/toolchain.tar.gz Note that the "official" toolchain we use with 1.3 is actually the snapshot build of it from 97.11.05; this is based on the sources tagged WORKING-alpha in the NetBSD source tree. The NetBSD/alpha binary distribution sets contain the binaries which comprise the NetBSD _VER release for the alpha. There are eight binary distribution sets and the "security" distribution set. The binary distribution sets can be found in the "alpha/binary/sets" subdirectory of the NetBSD _VER distribution tree, and are as follows: base The NetBSD/alpha _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. [ 13M gzipped, 41M uncompressed ] comp Things needed for compiling programs, other than the actual compiler programs themselves. (These are in the toolchain snapshot file described above.) This set includes the system include files (/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. [ 6M gzipped, 31M uncompressed ] etc 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.) [ 50K gzipped, 320K uncompressed ] games This set includes the games and their manual pages. [ 3M gzipped, 8M uncompressed ] kern This set contains a NetBSD/alpha _VER GENERIC kernel, named "/netbsd". You MUST install this distribution set. [ 1M gzipped, 2M uncompressed ] man 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. [ 2.5M gzipped, 10M uncompressed ] misc 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. [ 2M gzipped, 9M uncompressed ] text This set includes NetBSD's text processing tools, including groff, all related programs, and their manual pages. [ 1M gzipped, 4M uncompressed ] The alpha security distribution set is named "secr" and can be found in the "alpha/binary/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 "base" 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 "secr" 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.) [ 1M gzipped, 3M uncompressed ] 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 unless you run "tar" with the "--unlink" option. If you follow the normal installation or upgrade procedures, this will be taken care of for you.