The installation can be broken down into three basic steps: * Run Mkfs to build a filesystem or filesystems. * Run Install Utility to load the files onto your filesystems. * Run the booter to boot the system. **** Preparing the filesystem(s) Double-click on the Mkfs application icon to start it up. It will ask you for the SCSI ID of the drive that you are installing upon. Once this is selected, it will present a list of the partitions on that disk. Select the partition on which you wish to build a filesystem and click on the "Format" button. You will now be asked for a bunch of parameters for the hard drive and the filesystem. Usually, you can just take the defaults. If you are installing onto a Syquest, please see the FAQ. Note that although this dialog only has the "OK" button, you are not committed, yet. Once you get the values you want, press the "OK" button. A dialog will be presented at this point with two options: "Format" and "Cancel." If you choose "Cancel," nothing will be written to your drive. If you choose "Format," the program will proceed to make a filesystem. Mkfs is not a well-behaved Macintosh application. It will not allow any other tasks to run while it does (cooperative multitasking at its best). When it's finished, the program will put up a dialog to ask if you have scanned the output for any error messages. Usually there won't have been any errors, but do scan the output to make sure. Simply click on the "I Read It" button and the program will quit. Repeat as necessary for any extra partitions that you wish to make filesystems on. Note that you do _not_ need a filesystem on your swap partition. **** Installing the files Double-click on the Install Utility icon to start it up. The installer will present the same SCSI ID menu that mkfs did. Select the same SCSI ID that you did for mkfs--i.e., the one you are installing onto. If you are installing onto a single root partition, proceed to the "Installation of base files" section, below. If you have not created filesystems for the root, usr, and any other filesystems, go back to "Preparing the filesystem(s)," above. When you started the installer, it mounted your root partition. Just before it printed, "Mounting partition 'A' as /," it printed lines like: sd1 at scsi ID 5. This means that the device for scsi ID 5 is sd1. The partitions are signified by a trailing letter. For instance, sd1a would be the root partition of the second scsi disk in the chain, and sd0g would be the first usr partition on the first scsi disk. You will need to know the proper device to mount the remaining partition(s) by hand: * Select "Build Devices" from the "File" menu. * Select "Mini Shell" from the "File" menu. * Mount the filesystems you wish with the command: mount device path For example, if you wish to mount a usr partition from the first scsi disk, sd0, on /usr, you would type: mount /dev/sd0g /usr * Type "quit" after you have mounted all the filesystems. Installation of base files: Select the "Install" menu item from the "File" menu and install base12, netbsd, and any other packages you wish to install at this time (see the contents section for information about what's in each package). The installer will print out the filename of each file as it is installed, and will take quite some time to install everything. As is the case with Mkfs, this is not a particularly well-behaved Macintosh application and the machine will be completely tied up while the installation takes place. At some point after installing the base package, select the "Build Devices" option from the "File" menu. This will create a bunch of device nodes for you and will create your initial /etc/fstab. The installer program also has an option to give you a mini-shell. Do not use this unless you know what you are doing. **** Booting the system Double-click on the NetBSD/mac68k Booter icon to start the application. Check that the options in the Booting dialog look sane--especially the SCSI ID. If not, correct them to your preference. When you are satisfied with your choices, try booting NetBSD. If you wish to save your preferences, choose the "Save Preferences" option in the "File" menu, then quit the application and restart. Due to a long-standing bug, the preferences will not be saved unless you quit. If the system does not come up, send mail to scottr@netbsd.org describing your software, your hardware, and as complete a description of the problem as you can. If the system does come up, congratulations, you have successfully installed NetBSD 1.2. When you reboot into NetBSD, you should log in as "root" at the login prompt. There is no initial password, but if you're using the machine in a networked environment, you should create yourself an account and protect it and the "root" account with good passwords. Some of the files in the NetBSD 1.2 distribution might need to be tailored for your site. In particular, the /etc/sendmail.cf file will almost definitely need to be adjusted, and other files in /etc will probably need to be modified, as well. If you are unfamiliar with UN*X-like system administration, it's recommended that you buy a book that discusses it.