The upgrade to NetBSD 1.2 is a binary upgrade; it would be prohibitive to make users upgrade by compiling and installing the 1.2 sources, and it would be very difficult to even compile a set of instructions that allowed them to do so. To do the upgrade, you must have at least base.tar.gz on disk and a copy of the proper netbsd.default. It will require quite a bit of disk space to do the upgrade. Since upgrading involves replacing the kernel, 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 YOUR DISK, whether on the NetBSD partition or on another operating system's partition, before beginning the upgrade process. To upgrade your system, follow the following instructions: Make sure your are root. Just in case the new binaries don't run with the old kernel, make copies of several key binaries from /bin, /sbin and /usr/bin in some directory. (Things like sh, cp, ls, rm, tar, halt, and others.) Extract the tar.gz files. Remember to use the --unlink option with tar so it can replace binaries currently in use. For example, to extract base.tar.gz: cd / tar -xpzf /gz.files/base.tar.gz --unlink Extract all the tar.gz files you want. You should carefully work at upgrading /etc. There may be changes to file formats depending on what version of NetBSD/pc532 you are running. BE CAREFUL IF YOU ARE NOT RUNNING WITH SECURITY. The 1.2 distribution does contain support for password encryption. If you are upgrading from 1.0, it would be reasonable to save a copy of master.passwd and remove all passwords until after you upgrade. (NetBSD-1.0 did not ship with password encryption.) Place netbsd.default in / as the file netbsd. Reboot. (Remember, detbsd.default is a 9600 console line kernel. Read the last part of the new installation part of these notes to find out how to change your default speed.) After reboot, you should make sure you check your new file systems.