About this Document............................................2
Quick install notes for the impatient..........................2
What is NetBSD?................................................3
Dedication.....................................................4
Changes Between the NetBSD 5.0 and 5.1 Releases................4
Security Advisory Fixes.....................................4
Other Security Fixes........................................5
Kernel......................................................6
File Systems................................................6
Networking..................................................7
Miscellaneous Drivers.......................................9
Audio.......................................................9
Security....................................................9
Storage....................................................10
Platform specific..........................................10
Miscellaneous..............................................13
Known Problems.............................................17
Features to be removed in a later release.....................17
The NetBSD Foundation.........................................18
Sources of NetBSD.............................................18
NetBSD 5.1_STABLE Release Contents............................18
NetBSD/amd64 subdirectory structure........................19
Binary distribution sets...................................19
NetBSD/amd64 System Requirements and Supported Devices........21
Getting the NetBSD System on to Useful Media..................21
Preparing your System for NetBSD installation.................23
Installing the NetBSD System..................................23
Running the sysinst installation program...................23
Introduction............................................23
Possible hardware problems..............................23
General.................................................23
Quick install...........................................23
Booting NetBSD..........................................24
Network configuration...................................24
Installation drive selection and parameters.............25
Selecting which sets to install.........................25
Partitioning the disk...................................25
Preparing your hard disk................................26
Getting the distribution sets...........................26
Installation from CD-ROM................................26
Installation using ftp..................................26
Installation using NFS..................................27
Installation from an unmounted file system..............27
Installation from a local directory.....................27
Extracting the distribution sets........................27
Finalizing your installation............................27
Post installation steps.......................................27
Upgrading a previously-installed NetBSD System................30
Compatibility Issues With Previous NetBSD Releases............31
Issues when running older binaries on NetBSD 5.1_STABLE....31
Issues affecting an upgrade from NetBSD 3.x releases.......32
Issues affecting an upgrade from NetBSD 4.x releases.......33
Using online NetBSD documentation.............................33
Administrivia.................................................34
Thanks go to..................................................34
We are........................................................35
Legal Mumbo-Jumbo.............................................41
The End.......................................................47
This document describes the installation procedure for
NetBSD
5.1_STABLE on the
amd64
platform.
It is available in four different formats titled
INSTALL.ext,
where
.ext
is one of
.ps, .html, .more,
or .txt:
.ps.html.moremore(1)
and
less(1)
pager utility programs.
This is the format in which the on-line
man
pages are generally presented.
.txtYou are reading the HTML version.
This section contains some brief notes describing what you need to install NetBSD 5.1_STABLE on a machine of the amd64 architecture.
Option 1: bootable CD-ROM images containing the full distribution.
These can be found
on an FTP site near you, usually located in the
/pub/NetBSD/iso/
directory.
Check the NetBSD website for details.
Option 2: bootable CD-ROM images from
amd64/installation/cdrom/.
These images are bootable, but do not contain binary sets.
They are intended for network installs or system repair.
boot.iso
is for VGA console installation, and
boot-com.iso
is for installation over serial console (com0, 9600 baud).
Option 3: boot floppy images from
amd64/installation/floppy/.
boot1.fs
and
boot2.fs
are floppy images for VGA console installation.
boot-com1.fs
and
boot-com2.fs
are for installation via serial console (com0, 9600 baud).
To boot with ACPI disabled, choose the "no ACPI" option from the boot menu, or interrupt the menu and enter the NetBSD boot prompt. Type boot -2 to boot with ACPI disabled.
amd64/binary/sets/
directory.
When you boot the install
the installation program
can fetch these files for you (using e.g. ftp)
if you have a network connection.
There are several other methods to get the binary sets onto
your machine.
You will at a minimum need
one of the kernel sets, typically
kern-GENERIC.tgz,
as well as
base.tgz
and
etc.tgz.
In a typical workstation installation you will probably want
all the installation sets.
Many commercial and freeware programs are available to burn CD-ROMs.
If you have problems writing a raw image to a floppy,
the
rawrite.exe
MS-DOS program
or the
Rawrite32
Windows32 program (installed by
rawr32.exe)
in the
i386/installation/misc/
directory may be of help.
The disk(s) you just prepared will be used to boot the installation kernel, which contains all the tools required to install NetBSD.
The NetBSD Operating System is a fully functional Open Source UNIX-like operating system derived from the University of California, Berkeley Networking Release 2 (Net/2), 4.4BSD-Lite, and 4.4BSD-Lite2 sources. NetBSD runs on 57 different system architectures (ports) across 15 distinct CPU families, and is being ported to more. The NetBSD 5.1_STABLE release contains complete binary releases for many different system architectures. (A few ports are not fully supported at this time and are thus not part of the binary distribution. Please see the NetBSD web site at http://www.NetBSD.org/ for information on them.)
NetBSD is a completely integrated system. In addition to its highly portable, high performance kernel, NetBSD features a complete set of user utilities, compilers for several languages, the X Window System, firewall software and numerous other tools, all accompanied by full source code.
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 NetBSD wouldn't exist.
NetBSD 5.1 is dedicated to the memory of Martti Kuparinen, who was the victim of a traffic accident in June 2010.
Martti's technical contributions are too many to list here in full. He created and maintained numerous packages in pkgsrc, updated two packet filter solutions distributed with NetBSD and improved several hardware drivers. Beyond that he was always helpful and friendly. His example encouraged users to contribute to the project and share their work with the community. Some of these users later became NetBSD developers themselves thanks to Martti's efforts.
The NetBSD 5.1_STABLE release is the first feature update of the NetBSD 5.0 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed critical for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements.
Please note that all fixes in security/critical updates (i.e., NetBSD 5.0.1, 5.0.2, etc.) are cumulative, so the latest update contains all such fixes since the corresponding minor release. These fixes also appear in minor releases (i.e., NetBSD 5.1, 5.2, etc.).
The complete list of changes can be found in the CHANGES-5.1: http://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-5.1/CHANGES-5.1 file in the top level directory of the NetBSD 5.1 release tree. An abbreviated list is as follows:
passwd(1)
changing weakness):
http://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/security/advisories/NetBSD-SA2009-004.txt.asc
hack(6)):
http://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/security/advisories/NetBSD-SA2009-007.txt.asc
Advisories prior to NetBSD-SA2009-004 do not affect NetBSD 5.0: http://www.NetBSD.org/support/security/patches-5.0.html.
ntpd(8):
Fix CVE-2009-3563.
fts(3):
Avoid possible integer overflow on really deep dirs, and subsequent collateral
damage.
Received from OpenBSD via US-CERT as VU #590371.
arc4random(3):
Keep arc4_i and arc4_j synchronised after a rekeying.
This prevents accidentally ending up in a short ARC4 cycle.
ftpd(8):
Fix a remote crash. PR 43023.
setpriority(2)
returned EACCES instead of EPERM.
PR 41489.
lockf(3)
passes its arguments through to
fcntl(2)
but is supposed to support -ve lengths (lock area before current offset).
Nothing in libc or the kernel allowed for this, so some random part of the
file would get locked.
PR 41620.
fsck_ext2fs(8):
Ignore the "-P" option as intended, to make this work with, e.g.,
"fsck_flags=-pP" in
/etc/rc.conf.
PR 41490.
tunefs(8):
Allow tunefs to clear any type of WAPBL log, not only in-filesystem ones.
fsck_ffs(8):
Do some basic checks of the WAPBL journal, and fail if the kernel would
refuse to mount the filesystem read/write.
Add code to clear the bogus journal when not run in preen (-p) mode.
wapbl(4):
If the WAPBL journal can't be read (ffs_wapbl_replay_start() fails), mount
the filesystem anyway if MNT_FORCE is present.
This allows to still boot single-user a system with a corrupted WAPBL on /,
and so get a chance to run fsck to fix it.
cp(1)
from NTFS. PR 38531.
mount(8)
with -u against cd9660 root in the presence of mfs or tmpfs
/dev
prepared after initial mountroot.
wapbl(4):
Fix replay problems which could corrupt the fs. PR 43336.
ath(4):
Remove the binary HAL and update to the open source HAL.
age(4)
driver for Attansic L1.
ale(4)
driver for Atheros AR8121/AR8113/AR8114.
brgphy(4):
Add support for BCM5462, BCM54K2 and BCM5722.
arp(4):
Don't require the gateway address to have room for both an interface name and
address.
Fixes a regression in 'arp -s ...' on interfaces such as xennet0 with unusually
long names. PR 41878.
bge(4)
bugs.
ifpci(4):
Fix endianness issues when accessing the B-channel fifos.
wm(4):
re(4):
le(4):
Don't immediately switch UTP/AUI ports on lost carrier.
agr(4):
Add vlan support and hardware offload capabilities.
Add support for disabling the LACP protocol by setting LINK1 on the agr
interface.
bnx(4):
vr(4):
Add suspend/resume support.
carp(4):
Improve logging. PR 38260.
ral(4).
vlan(4):
Inherit the parent's TCP segmentation offload capability.
ping(8):
Deal with source route and record route specially giving a meaningful error
message when remote side doesn't support record route.
PR 41111.
ifconfig(8):
Don't require a "vlan" argument with "-vlanif". "ifconfig vlan0 -vlanif" now
works as one would expect.
tap(4):
Fix a potential leak on device close.
bpf(4):
Prevent malicious bytecode from crashing the kernel with a divide-by-zero trap.
ehci(4):
Add a workaround for ATI SB600 and SB700 revisions A12 and A13 to avoid a USB
subsystem hang when the system has multiple USB devices connected to it or one
device is re-connected often.
uftdi(4):
Add support for multiple channel cards, specifically quad channel FT4232H.
ums(4):
Add quirks to make MS Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 work.
PR 41737.
Add support for USB HID devices that report absolute coordinates instead of
relative movement data, e.g. touchpanels. Add support for the Microsoft
Natural Ergonomic Desktop 7000 mouse.
apm(4):
Fix suspend/resume.
hdaudio(4),
a standards-compliant driver for Intel High Definition Audio.
It will replace
azalia(4)
eventually.
gcscaudio(4),
an AMD Geode CS5536 audio driver.
pad(4):
Catch up to
audio(4)
device_t/softc split to prevent pad from corrupting its child device's softc.
audio(4):
OSS audio allows mixer operations on the dsp device.
NetBSD would previously return EINVAL in these circumstances.
This can break audio in apps running under Linux emulation.
Select whether to call mixer_ioctl() or audio_ioctl() based on whether the
command smells like a mixer ioctl or not.
pam(3):
Restore the good old UNIX behavior of root password changing: only root may
change the root password.
racoon(8):
Fix a bug where racoon used a wrong IPsec-SA handle that was for another peer
if it received an ISAKMP message for IPsec-SA that has the same message-id as
the message-id that was received before.
ipsec(4):
Add a missing splx() call.
PR 41701.
opencrypto(9):
raidctl(8)
commands.
sdhc(4),
a driver for SD controllers following the SD Host Controller Standard
Simplified Specification.
wb(4),
a driver for Winbond W83L518D SD/MMC readers.
siisata(4):
Sync with HEAD, fixing a number of bugs.
PR 41579.
mfi(4):
Fix command list corruption seen on heavy I/O load.
Add support for MFI gen2 devices.
twa(4):
Disable completely bogus DIAGNOSTIC check.
wdc(4):
use 8bits access to legacy IDE registers through the SATA interface (except
data registers).
Stops errors such as the following when probing SATA drives through controllers
that offer the legacy pciide interface: viaide1 channel 0: reset failed for
drive 0
piixide(4):
Add Intel 3400 support.
ichlpcib(4):
Fix watchdog code:
asus(4):
agp(4):
Add support for Intel G35, G45, and Q45.
cpuctl(8):
Add newer VIA C7 core and VIA Nano.
When printing an unknown VIA CPU, default to 'Unknown IDT/VIA' instead of 'C3'.
acpi(4):
If the firmware describes duplicate keyboard controller nodes, don't panic
when the driver fails to map registers. PR 39671.
cgd(4)
support on all amd64 and i386 XEN kernels.
bus_dma(9)
memory allocation failures for 32bit DMA on large-memory machines.
binpatch(8)
utility to add support for ELF binaries, old src/usr.sbin/mdsetimage sources
which support misc executable formats without LGPL'ed libbfd.
fd(4):
Correctly detect the default density.
cd(4)
devices properly.
mmap(2),
mremap(2),
shmat(2)
or
sbrk(2)
return -1 in case of an error.
A side benefit of this is to fix a segfault caused by jemalloc when
mmap(2)
failed.
ksyms(4)
actually work.
lom(4),
a driver for LOMlite lights out management hardware monitor and watchdog timer.
ddb(4)
in GENERIC-like kernels.
sh(1):
Make the cd builtin accept and ignore -P.
PR 42557.
fdisk(8):
Fix issues with large disks.
savecore(8):
Instead of exiting with an obscure error message if -N /kernelname isn't
specified, blithely assume the kernel will consume around 20 megs.
newfs(8):
Issue a better error message if attempting to create a file system on a block
device.
Inspired by PR 41127.
newfs_msdos(8):
Make fs size detection get proper size rather than disk size.
termcap(3):
Only add the ZZ capability for termcap entries that are larger than 1023 bytes.
dkctl(8):
List the partition types addwedge understands.
PR 37252.
Make dkctl conform to its man page and print the device name on addwedge when
the addition was successful (as well as indicating success).
pthread(3):
newsyslog(8):
Reset ziptype on each line. Failure to do this caused any log file to be
compressed if it was listed after a line using Z or J flag.
pstat(8):
Distinguish between UFS1 and UFS2 inodes by reading the ufsmount structure,
the previous heuristic of comparing the size fields of inode and dinode failed.
btpin(1):
Add a -P flag to attempt immediate pairing.
ksh(1):
Support 0xnn for hexadecimal constants, as well as 16#nn.
PR 40512.
kill(1):
Make sure that numerical signals and pids are in range for their types.
PR 42143.
pcap(3):
pcap_lookupnet(): reset ifr before SIOCGIFNETMASK.
Without it we get back a bogus netmask.
PR 41367.
man(1):
Accept a pathname to a man file, e.g., "man ./man.1"
setlocale(3):
Handle nonexistent locales properly.
PR 42124.
amldb(8):
Check validity of parent to avoid a potential segfault.
sort(1):
Fix a ton of bugs including but not limited to PR 18614 PR 27257 PR 25551 PR 221
82 PR 31095 PR 30504 PR 36816 PR 37860 PR 39308 PR 42094.
user(8):
Fix -p flag: rm_eo is the first character *after* the match, so no need for a +1. Blowfish hashes are only 53 chars long, not 54.
hunt(6):
Fix possible remote DoS of a running hunt game, and prevent a possible
theoretical attack involving >= 1 billion ammo.
systat(1):
Fix problems with SIGWINCH. PR 42161.
gzip(1):
df(1):
Block numbers are measured in f_frsize units.
Make -P option use this instead of f_bsize.
Also account for reserved blocks like normal non-P output.
PR 41541.
window(1):
Fix a SEGV with certain terminal types.
PR 41581.
pkg_admin(1).
Wrapper scripts that handle the common use cases are provided.
racoonctl(8):
Adjust ADMINPORTDIR to match that of racoon (
/var/run
). PR 41376.
schedctl(8):
Skip LSIDL and LSZOMB threads when retrieving info.
postinstall(8)
now knows about
/etc/dhcpcd.conf.
drvctl(8):
Allow querying for root devices in the tree by specifying an empty device name.
Ensure that l_devname is NUL-terminated and fail otherwise. If drvctl -l is
used without argument, print the root device nodes.
paste(1):
Null-terminate the delimiter list string after processing escapes (which can
shorten it) because the code that issues delimiters depends on it being
null-terminated.
This caused e.g. paste -d ' ' a b to print a '0' at the beginning of each
line.
PR 41159.
/dev/null
would cause less to trash
/dev/null
if run with sufficient privileges.
PR 42237.
sendmsg(2),
copy the msghdr structure before trying to use it.
cdce(4):
Add support for the Openmoko Freerunner.
PR 40049.
pms(4):
Add elantech multi-touch support.
ugen(4):
ugen_get_cdesc() can return NULL.
When this happens, return EINVAL error instead of crashing.
puc(4):
Add support for Oxford Semiconductor OXmPCI952 2 port UARTs.
Add support for the IBM 481033H SCC.
sysinst(8):
Try ATA/SCSI identify commands and when successful, use the model information
along with the disk size when creating the 'Available disks' menu.
PR 41925.
/etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts.
makefs(8)
from creating invalid ISO format on rockridge support which causes fatal errors in ARC BIOS firmware on MIPS Magnum R4000.
PR 42410.
sysinst(8):
When creating /etc/fstab: for the first swap partition use type "sw,dp"
instead of "sw", so dump device gets configured correctly if swap is not on
the second partition.
PR 42148.
wc(1):
Add support for "-L" option (longest line) as present in the GNU and FreeBSD
versions of "wc".
Using block device nodes (e.g., wd0a) directly for I/O may cause a kernel
crash when the file system containing
/dev
is FFS and is mounted with -o log.
Workaround: use raw disk devices (e.g., rwd0a), or remount the file system
without -o log.
Occassionally, gdb may cause a process that is being debugged to hang when ``single stepped''. Workaround: kill and restart the affected process.
gdb cannot debug running threaded programs correctly.
Workaround: generate a core file from the program using
gcore(1)
and pass the core to gdb, instead of debugging the running program.
The sparc port does not have functional SMP support in this release.
mount(8))
will be removed in the next major release.
NetBSD
5.1_STABLE
includes a preview of WAPBL
(Write Ahead Physical Block Logging),
which will replace soft dependencies in the next major release.
See
wapbl(4)
and
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-announce/2008/12/14/msg000051.html
for details.
It should be considered as deprecated. Users are expected to not rely on it any more beyond this major release.
Further, at least version 3.1 of Xen will be required to run NetBSD as Dom0 or DomU.
The
NetBSD
Foundation is a tax exempt, not-for-profit 501(c)(3) corporation
that devotes itself to the traditional goals and Spirit of the
NetBSD
Project and owns the trademark of the word
``NetBSD''.
It supports the design, development, and adoption of
NetBSD
worldwide.
More information on the
NetBSD
Foundation, its composition, aims, and work can be found at:
http://www.NetBSD.org/foundation/
Refer to
http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/
The root directory of the NetBSD 5.1_STABLE release is organized as follows:
.../NetBSD-5.1_STABLE/
CHANGESCHANGES-5.0CHANGES-5.1CHANGES.prevLAST_MINUTEREADME.filessource/In addition to the files and directories listed above, there is one directory per architecture, for each of the architectures for which NetBSD 5.1_STABLE has a binary distribution.
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:
config(1)
utility.
All the above source sets are located in the
source/sets
subdirectory of the distribution tree.
The source sets are distributed as compressed tar files.
Except for the
pkgsrc
set, which is traditionally unpacked into
/usr/pkgsrc,
all sets may be unpacked into
/usr/src
with the command:
# cd / ; tar -zxpf set_name.tgz
In each of the source distribution set directories, there are files which contain the checksums of the files in the directory:
MD5SHA512The SHA512 digest is safer, but MD5 checksums are provided so that a wider range of operating systems can check the integrity of the release files.
amd64
subdirectory of the distribution:
.../NetBSD-5.1_STABLE/amd64/.
It contains the following files and directories:
INSTALL.htmlINSTALL.psINSTALL.txtINSTALL.more.more
file contains underlined text using the
more(1)
conventions for indicating italic and bold display.
binary/kernel/netbsd-GENERIC.gznetbsd-INSTALL.gznetbsd-INSTALL_XEN3_DOMU.gznetbsd-XEN3_DOM0.gznetbsd-XEN3_DOMU.gzsets/installation/cdrom/floppy/misc/amd64/binary/sets
subdirectory
of the
NetBSD
5.1_STABLE
distribution tree, and are as follows:
/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.
/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.
GENERIC
kernel, named
/netbsd.
You
must
install this distribution set.
/usr/share.
groff(1),
all related programs, and their manual pages.
NetBSD maintains its own set of sources for the X Window System in order to assure tight integration and compatibility. These sources are based on X.Org. Binary sets for the X Window System are distributed with NetBSD. The sets are:
The amd64 binary distribution sets are distributed as gzipped tar files
named with the extension
.tgz,
e.g.
base.tgz.
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 filenames stored in the sets are relative and therefore
the files are extracted
below the current directory.
Therefore, if you want to extract the binaries into your system, i.e.
replace the system binaries with them, you have to run the
tar -xzpf
command from the root directory (
/
) of your system.
NetBSD/amd64
supports CPUs that implement the 64bit AMD64 architecture.
These currently include AMD Opteron, AMD Athlon64, and Intel CPUs that
implement the EM64T extension.
Note that if you are installing or upgrading from writable media, it can be write-protected if you wish. These systems mount a root image from inside the kernel, and will not need to write to the media. If you booted from a floppy, the floppy disk may be removed from the drive after the system has booted.
Installation is supported from several media types, including:
The steps necessary to prepare the distribution sets for installation depend upon which installation medium you choose. The steps for the various media are outlined below.
binary/sets
and
amd64/binary/sets.
Proceed to the instructions on installation.
split(1)
command, running e.g.
split -b 235k base.tgz base.
to split the
base.tgz
file from
amd64/binary/sets
into files named
base.aa,
base.ab,
and so on.
Repeat this for all
set_name.tgz
files, splitting them into
set_name.xx
files.
Count the number of
set_name.xx
files that make up the
distribution sets you want to install or upgrade.
You will need one sixth that number of 1.44 MB floppies.
Format all of the floppies with
MS-DOS.
Do
not
make any of them bootable
MS-DOS
floppies, i.e. don't use
format /s
to format them.
(If the floppies are bootable, then the
MS-DOS
system files that make them bootable will take up some space, and you
won't be able to fit the distribution set parts on the disks.)
If you're using floppies that are formatted for
MS-DOS
by their manufacturers, they probably aren't bootable, and you can use
them out of the box.
Place all of the
set_name.xx
files on the
MS-DOS
disks.
Once you have the files on MS-DOS disks, you can proceed to the next step in the installation or upgrade process. If you're installing NetBSD from scratch, go to the section on preparing your hard disk, below. If you're upgrading an existing installation, go directly to the section on upgrading.
204.152.190.15
and the IPv6 address is
2001:4f8:3:7:230:48ff:fec6:9aaa:21
(as of May, 2010).
Once you have this information, you can proceed to the next step in the installation or upgrade process. If you're installing NetBSD from scratch, go to the section on preparing your hard disk, below. If you're upgrading an existing installation, go directly to the section on upgrading.
/etc/exports
file on the NFS server and resetting its mount daemon (mountd).
(Both of these actions will probably require superuser
privileges on the server.)
You need to know the numeric IP address of the NFS server, and, if you don't have DHCP available on your network and the server is not on a network directly connected to the machine on which you're installing or upgrading NetBSD, you need to know the numeric IP address of the router closest to the NetBSD machine. Finally, you need to know the numeric IP address of the NetBSD machine itself.
Once the NFS server is set up properly and you have the information mentioned above, you can proceed to the next step in the installation or upgrade process. If you're installing NetBSD from scratch, go to the section on preparing your hard disk, below. If you're upgrading an existing installation, go directly to the section on upgrading.
If you're making the tape on a UNIX-like system, the easiest way to do so is probably something like:
# tar -cf tape_device dist_directories
where
tape_device
is the name of the tape device that
describes the tape drive you're using; possibly
/dev/rst0,
or something similar, but it will vary from system to system.
(If you can't figure it out, ask your system administrator.)
In the above example,
dist_directories
are the
distribution sets' directories, for the distribution sets you
wish to place on the tape.
For instance, to put the
kern-GENERIC, base, and etc
distributions on tape (in
order to do the absolute minimum installation to a new disk),
you would do the following:
# cd .../NetBSD-5.1_STABLE
# cd amd64/binary
# tar -cf tape_device kern-GENERIC base etc
Once you have the files on the tape, you can proceed to the next step in the installation or upgrade process. If you're installing NetBSD from scratch, go to the section on preparing your hard disk, below. If you're upgrading an existing installation, go directly to the section on upgrading.
It is strongly recommended that as part of the installation procedure, you upgrade your system's BIOS to the latest version available from your system vendor. Later BIOSes often contain workarounds for CPU and chipset bugs, workarounds that cannot be provided by the operating system.
In the past, bugs fixed this way have been known to cause unpredictable
behaviour and frequent system crashes with
NetBSD
and other
UNIX-like
operating systems on x86 hardware.
Using sysinst, installing NetBSD is a relatively easy process. Still, you should read this document and have it in hand when doing the installation process. This document tries to be a good guide to the installation, and as such, covers many details for the sake of completeness. Do not let this discourage you; the install program is not hard to use.
Should you encounter hardware problems during installation, try rebooting after unplugging removable devices you don't need for installation. Non-removable devices can be disabled with userconf (use boot -c to enter it).
The following is a walk-through of the steps you will take while
getting
NetBSD
installed on your hard disk.
sysinst
is a menu driven
installation system that allows for some freedom in doing the
installation.
Sometimes, questions will be asked and in many cases
the default answer will be displayed in brackets
(``[ ]'')
after the question.
If you wish to stop the installation, you may press
CONTROL-C
at any time, but if you do, you'll have to begin the installation
process again from scratch by running the
/sysinst
program from the command prompt.
It is not necessary to reboot.
First, let's describe a quick install. The other sections of this document go into the installation procedure in more detail, but you may find that you do not need this. If you want detailed instructions, skip to the next section. This section describes a basic installation, using a CD-ROM install as an example.
.***********************************************.
* NetBSD-5.1_STABLE Install System *
* *
*>a: Install NetBSD to hard disk *
* b: Upgrade NetBSD on a hard disk *
* c: Re-install sets or install additional sets *
* d: Reboot the computer *
* e: Utility menu *
* x: Exit Install System *
.***********************************************.
root
and set a password for that account.
You are also advised to edit
/etc/rc.conf
to match your needs.
Boot your machine.
The boot loader will start, and will print a countdown and begin booting.
The most important thing to know is that
wd0
is
NetBSD's
name for your first IDE disk,
wd1
the second, etc.
sd0
is your first SCSI disk,
sd1
the second, etc.
Once NetBSD has booted and printed all the boot messages, you will be presented with a welcome message and a main menu. It will also include instructions for using the menus.
If you do not intend to use networking during the installation, but you do want your machine to be configured for networking once it is installed, you should first go to the Utility menu and select the Configure network option. If you only want to temporarily use networking during the installation, you can specify these parameters later. If you are not using the Domain Name System (DNS), you can give an empty response when asked to provide a server.
To start the installation, select Install NetBSD to hard disk from the main menu.
The first thing is to identify the disk on which you want to
install
NetBSD.
sysinst
will report a list of disks it finds
and ask you for your selection.
You should see disk names like
sd0
or
sd1.
The next step is to choose which distribution sets you wish to install. Options are provided for full, minimal, and custom installations. If you choose sets on your own, base, etc, and a kernel must be selected.
You will be asked if you want to use the entire disk or only part of the disk. If you decide to use the entire disk for NetBSD, sysinst will check for the presence of other operating systems and you will be asked to confirm that you want to overwrite these.
The partition table of the NetBSD part of a disk is called a disklabel. If your disk already has a disklabel written to it, you can choose Use existing partition sizes. Otherwise, select Set sizes of NetBSD partitions.
After you have chosen your partitions and their sizes
(or if you opted to use the existing partitions),
you will be presented with the layout of the
NetBSD
disklabel and given one more chance to change it.
For each partition, you can set the type, offset and size,
block and fragment size, and the mount point.
The type that
NetBSD
uses for normal file storage is called
4.2BSD.
A swap partition has a special type called
swap.
You can also specify a partition as type
MSDOS.
This is useful if you share the disk with
MS-DOS
or
Windows;
NetBSD
is able to access the files on these partitions.
You can use the values from the MBR for the
MS-DOS
part of the disk to specify the partition of type
MSDOS
(you don't have to do this now, you can always re-edit
the disklabel to add this once you have installed
NetBSD,
or use
mbrlabel(8)
to help you update your disklabel with data from the MBR).
Some partitions in the disklabel have a fixed purpose.
a/)
bcde-pe
is the partition mounted on
/usr,
but this is historical practice and not a fixed value.
You will then be asked to name your disk's disklabel. The default response will be ok for most purposes. If you choose to name it something different, make sure the name is a single word and contains no special characters. You don't need to remember this name.
You are now at the point of no return. Nothing has been written to your disk yet, but if you confirm that you want to install NetBSD, your hard drive will be modified. If you are sure you want to proceed, select yes.
The install program will now label your disk and make the file systems you specified. The file systems will be initialized to contain NetBSD bootstrapping binaries and configuration files. You will see messages on your screen from the various NetBSD disk preparation tools that are running. There should be no errors in this section of the installation. If there are, restart from the beginning of the installation process. Otherwise, you can continue the installation program after pressing the return key.
The NetBSD distribution consists of a number of sets that come in the form of gzipped tarfiles. At this point, you will be presented with a menu which enables you to choose from one of the following methods of installing the sets. Some of these methods will first load the sets on your hard disk, others will extract the sets directly.
For all these methods, the first step is making the sets available for extraction, and then do the actual installation. The sets can be made available in a few different ways. The following sections describe each of those methods. After reading the one about the method you will be using, you can continue to the section labeled `Extracting the distribution sets'.
When installing from a CD-ROM, you will be asked to specify
the device name for your CD-ROM drive
(usually cd0),
and the directory name on the CD-ROM where the distribution files are.
sysinst will then check if the files are indeed available in the specified location, and proceed to the actual extraction of the sets.
To be able to install using ftp, you first need to configure
your network setup if you haven't already done so.
sysinst
will do this for you, asking you
if you want to use DHCP.
If you do not use DHCP, you can enter network configuration
details yourself.
If you do not have DNS set up for the machine that you
are installing on, you can just press
RETURN
in answer to this question, and DNS will not be used.
You will also be asked to specify the host that you want to transfer the sets from, the directory on that host, the account name and password used to log into that host using ftp, and optionally a proxy server to use. If you did not set up DNS, you will need to specify an IP address instead of a hostname for the ftp server.
sysinst will proceed to transfer all the default set files from the remote site to your hard disk.
To be able to install using NFS, you first need to configure
your network setup if you haven't already done so.
sysinst
will do this for you, asking you
if you want to use DHCP.
If you do not use DHCP, you can enter network configuration
details yourself.
If you do not have DNS set up for the machine that you
are installing on, you can just press
RETURN
in answer to this question, and DNS will not be used.
You will also be asked to specify the host that you want to transfer the sets from and the directory on that host that the files are in. This directory should be mountable by the machine you are installing on, i.e., correctly exported to your machine.
If you did not set up DNS, you will need to specify an IP address instead of a hostname for the NFS server.
In order to install from a local file system, you will
need to specify the device that the file system resides
on
(for example sd1e)
the type of the file system,
and the directory on the specified file system where the sets are located.
sysinst
will then check if it
can indeed access the sets at that location.
This option assumes that you have already done some preparation yourself. The sets should be located in a directory on a file system that is already accessible. sysinst will ask you for the name of this directory.
Before extraction begins, you can elect to watch the files being extracted; the name of each file that is extracted will be shown. This can slow down the installation process considerably on machines with slow graphics consoles or serial consoles. Alternatively, you can choose to see a progress bar. This is the preferred option as it shows progress without significantly slowing down the installation process.
After all the files have been extracted, the device node files will be created. If you have already configured networking, you will be asked if you want to use this configuration for normal operation. If so, these values will be installed in the network configuration files. The next menu will allow you to select the time zone that you're in, to make sure your clock has the right offset from UTC. Finally you will be asked to select a password encryption algorithm and can then set a password for the "root" account, to prevent the machine from coming up without access restrictions.
Congratulations, you have successfully installed NetBSD 5.1_STABLE. You can now reboot the machine and boot NetBSD from hard disk.
Once you've got the operating system running, there are a few things you need to do in order to bring the system into a properly configured state. The most important steps are described below.
/etc/rc.conf
If you or the installation software haven't done any configuration of
/etc/rc.conf
(sysinst
usually will),
the system will drop you into single user mode on first reboot with the
message
/etc/rc.conf is not configured. Multiuser boot aborted.
and with the root file system
(/)
mounted read-only.
When the system asks you to choose a shell, simply press
RETURN
to get to a
/bin/sh
prompt.
If you are asked for a terminal type, respond with
vt220
(or whatever is appropriate for your terminal type)
and press
RETURN.
You may need to type one of the following commands to get your delete key
to work properly, depending on your keyboard:
# stty erase '^h'
# stty erase '^?'
At this point, you need to configure at least
one file in the
/etc
directory.
You will need to mount your root file system read/write with:
# /sbin/mount -u -w /
Change to the
/etc
directory and take a look at the
/etc/rc.conf
file.
Modify it to your tastes, making sure that you set
rc_configured=YES
so that your changes will be enabled and a multi-user boot can
proceed.
Default values for the various programs can be found in
/etc/defaults/rc.conf,
where some in-line documentation may be found.
More complete documentation can be found in
rc.conf(5).
When you have finished editing
/etc/rc.conf,
type
exit
at the prompt to
leave the single-user shell and continue with the multi-user boot.
Other values that may need to be set in
/etc/rc.conf
for a networked environment are
hostname
and possibly
defaultroute.
You may also need to add an
ifconfig_int
for your
<int>
network interface,
along the lines of
ifconfig_wm0="inet 192.0.2.123 netmask 255.255.255.0"
or, if you have
myname.my.dom
in
/etc/hosts:
ifconfig_wm0="inet myname.my.dom netmask 255.255.255.0"
To enable proper hostname resolution, you will also want to add an
/etc/resolv.conf
file or (if you are feeling a little more adventurous) run
named(8).
See
resolv.conf(5)
or
named(8)
for more information.
Instead of manually configuring network and naming service,
DHCP can be used by setting
dhclient=YES
in
/etc/rc.conf.
Other files in
/etc
that may require modification or setting up include
/etc/mailer.conf,
/etc/nsswitch.conf,
and
/etc/wscons.conf.
After reboot, you can log in as
root
at the login prompt.
Unless you've set a password in
sysinst,
there
is no initial password.
You should create an account for yourself (see below) and protect it and the
``root''
account with good passwords.
By default, root login from the network is disabled (even via
ssh(1)).
One way to become root over the network is to log in as a different
user that belongs to group
``wheel''
(see
group(5))
and use
su(1)
to become root.
Use the
useradd(8)
command to add accounts to your system.
Do not
edit
/etc/passwd
directly! See
vipw(8)
and
pwd_mkdb(8)
if you want to edit the password database.
If you installed the X Window System, you may want to read the chapter about X in the NetBSD Guide: http://netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-x.html
If you wish to install any of the software freely available for UNIX-like systems you are strongly advised to first check the NetBSD package system, pkgsrc. pkgsrc automatically handles any changes necessary to make the software run on NetBSD. This includes the retrieval and installation of any other packages on which the software may depend.
amd64/5.1_STABLE/All
subdir.
You can install them with the following commands under
sh(1):
# PKG_PATH=ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/amd64/5.1_STABLE/All # export PKG_PATH # pkg_add -v tcsh # pkg_add -v bash # pkg_add -v perl # pkg_add -v apache # pkg_add -v kde # pkg_add -v firefox ...
If you are using
csh(1)
then replace the first two lines with the following:
# setenv PKG_PATH ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/amd64/5.1_STABLE/All
/pub/pkgsrc
directory.
If you would like to use such mirrors, you could also try the
/pub/NetBSD/packages/current-packages/NetBSD/amd64/5.1_STABLE/All
directory, which may have the same contents.
The above commands will install the Tenex-csh and Bourne Again shells, the Perl programming language, Apache web server, KDE desktop environment and the Firefox web browser as well as all the packages they depend on.
pkg_add(1)
command will complain about a version mismatch of packages with a message
like the following:
Warning: package `foo' was built for a different version of the OS:
NetBSD/i386 M.N (pkg) vs. NetBSD/i386 5.1_STABLE (this host),
/usr/pkgsrc
(though other locations work fine) with the commands:
# cd /usr
# tar -zxpf pkgsrc.tar.gz
After extracting, see the
doc/pkgsrc.txt
file in the extraction directory (e.g.,
/usr/pkgsrc/doc/pkgsrc.txt)
for more information.
/etc/mail/aliases
to forward root mail to the right place.
Don't forget to run
newaliases(1)
afterwards.
/etc/postfix/main.cf
file will almost definitely need to be adjusted.
If you prefer a different MTA, then install it using
pkgsrc or by hand and adjust
/etc/mailer.conf.
/etc/rc.local
to run any local daemons you use.
/etc
files are documented in section 5 of the manual; so just invoking
# man 5 filename
is likely to give you more information on these files.
The easiest way to upgrade to NetBSD 5.1_STABLE is with binaries, and that is the method documented here.
To do the upgrade, you must have one form of boot media available.
You must also have at least the
base
and
kern
binary distribution sets available.
Finally, you must have sufficient disk space available to install the
new binaries.
Since files already installed on the system are overwritten in place,
you only need additional free space for files which weren't previously
installed or to account for growth of the sets between releases.
If you have a few megabytes free on each of your root
(/)
and
/usr
partitions, you should have enough space.
Since upgrading involves replacing the kernel, boot blocks, 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 the NetBSD partition or on another operating system's partition on your disk before beginning the upgrade process.
The upgrade procedure
is similar to an installation, but without the hard disk partitioning.
sysinst
will attempt to merge the settings stored in your
/etc
directory with the new version of
NetBSD.
Also, file systems are checked before unpacking the sets.
Fetching the binary
sets is done in the same manner as the installation procedure;
refer to the installation part of the document for help.
After a new kernel has been copied to your hard disk, your
machine is a complete
NetBSD
5.1_STABLE
system.
However, that doesn't mean that you're finished with the upgrade process.
You will probably want to update the set of device
nodes you have in
/dev.
If you've changed the contents of
/dev
by hand, you will need to be careful about this, but if
not, you can just cd into
/dev,
and run the command:
# sh MAKEDEV all
Finally, you will want to delete old binaries that were part
of the version of
NetBSD
that you upgraded from and have since been removed from the
NetBSD
distribution.
Users upgrading from previous versions of NetBSD may wish to bear the following problems and compatibility issues in mind when upgrading to NetBSD 5.1_STABLE.
If your port uses X.Org and you see messages from the X server indicating that no devices were found, you may need to run X -configure and update your existing xorg.conf to use the BusID line from the newly-generated config file.
Dual-head support for PC systems has become broken for many configurations with the update to xorg-server 1.6.x, which has removed the userland PCI configuration mechanism, and needs to rely upon the OS. We hope to correct this for future releases. Workaround: The only workaround is non-trivial and requires programming several PCI BAR registers as they previously were in NetBSD 5.0.
If you are updating to
NetBSD
5.1_STABLE
without the aid of sysinst or postinstall and your port uses X.Org, be sure
to remove
/usr/X11R7/lib/X11/xkb/symbols/pc
before extracting the xbase set.
In the version of X.Org shipped with 5.0, this was a directory, but in more
recent X.Org versions it is a file.
On ports using X.Org, libpixman and libXfont had their major versions bumped.
This can be a source of trouble if using binary packages built on 5.0.x with
a clean install of 5.1_STABLE (upgrades from 5.0.x will include both old and new
versions of libpixman and libXfont).
Compatibility packages have been prepared and are available from:
ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/amd64/5.0/emulators/compat50-5.1.tgz
(or a convenient mirror).
This URL can be passed directly to the
pkg_add(1)
command.
pkg_install now depends on the pkgdb cache for automatic conflict detection. It is recommended to rebuild the cache with
# pkg_admin rebuild
audit-packages.conf(5)
has been superseded by
pkg_install.conf(5).
The default configuration is the same.
Support for
pkg_view(1)
has been retired.
The functionality of
audit-packages(1)
and
download-vulnerability-list(1)
has moved into
pkg_admin(1).
However, wrapper scripts that handle the common use cases are provided.
The pthread libraries from previous versions of
NetBSD
require that the
sysctl(3)
node
kern.no_sa_support
be set to
0.
This affects the following environments:
The 5.x kernel defaults to
0
for
kern.no_sa_support,
which covers the first case.
However, please note that a full installation of 5.x
(either from scratch or through an upgrade)
will set
kern.no_sa_support
to 1 during the boot process.
This means that for the last two cases, you will have to manually set
kern.no_sa_support
to
0,
using either the
sysctl(8)
command or through
sysctl.conf(5).
Note that sysinst will automatically invoke
postinstall fix
The following issues can generally be resolved by running postinstall with the etc set:
postinstall -s /path/to/etc.tgz check
postinstall -s /path/to/etc.tgz fix
Issues fixed by postinstall:
/etc
need upgrading.
These include:
/etc/defaults/*
/etc/mtree/*
/etc/daily
/etc/weekly
/etc/monthly
/etc/security
/etc/rc.subr
/etc/rc
/etc/rc.shutdown
/etc/rc.d/*
/etc/envsys.conf
The following issues need to be resolved manually:
postinstall -s /path/to/etc.tgz fix mailerconf
/etc/mailer.conf
file to use Postfix as the MTA. When using
sysinst
to upgrade the system, it will ask if you want this to be done.
Note that if you have a customized Sendmail setup, you need to set up Postfix in an equivalent way; there is no tool for automatic conversion of Sendmail configuration to a Postfix one.
Postfix will be started automatically when the system boots.
You may see messages like "$sendmail is not set properly" at boot.
You can suppress them by removing
/etc/rc.d/sendmail
and
/etc/rc.d/smmsp.
Those files and other parts of sendmail configuration like files under
/usr/share/sendmail
are not removed by default
while upgrading for those who want to continue using sendmail from
outside the base system.
If you want to delete them,
postinstall
can be used:
postinstall -s /path/to/etc.tgz fix sendmail
The following issues can generally be resolved by running postinstall with the etc set:
postinstall -s /path/to/etc.tgz check
postinstall -s /path/to/etc.tgz fix
Issues fixed by postinstall:
/etc
need upgrading.
These include:
/etc/defaults/*
/etc/mtree/*
/etc/daily
/etc/weekly
/etc/monthly
/etc/security
/etc/rc.subr
/etc/rc
/etc/rc.shutdown
/etc/rc.d/*
/etc/envsys.conf
The following issues need to be resolved manually:
mount(8)
command now requires the
nosuid
and
nodev
options to be explicitly specified.
Previously, these options were automatically enforced even if they
were not explicitly specified.
Documentation is available if you installed the manual
distribution set.
Traditionally, the
``man pages''
(documentation) are denoted by
`name(section)'.
Some examples of this are
intro(1),
man(1),
apropos(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 lowest 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.
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 majordomo@NetBSD.org. To get help on using the mailing list server, send mail to that address with an empty body, and it will reply with instructions. See http://www.NetBSD.org/mailinglists/ for a web interface.
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(1)
command shipped with
NetBSD,
and fill in as much information about the problem as you can.
Good bug reports include lots of details.
Bugs also can be submitted and queried with the web interface at http://www.NetBSD.org/support/send-pr.html
There are also port-specific mailing lists, to discuss aspects of each port of NetBSD. Use majordomo to find their addresses, or visit http://www.NetBSD.org/mailinglists/
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 us mail or subscribe to: netbsd-users@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 or WWW 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.
Keith Bostic Ralph Campbell Mike Karels Marshall Kirk McKusick
for their work on BSD systems, support, and encouragement.
(in alphabetical order)
All product names mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
The following notices are required to satisfy the license terms of the software that we have mentioned in this document:
NetBSD is a registered trademark of The NetBSD Foundation, Inc.
In the following statement, the phrase ``this text'' refers to portions
of the system documentation.
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form in
NetBSD, from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2004 Edition, Standard for
Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX),
The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6, Copyright (C) 2001-2004 by the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group.
In the event of any discrepancy between these versions and the original
IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group
Standard is the referee document.
The original Standard can be obtained online at
http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html.
This notice shall appear on any product containing this material