Re: NetBSD install experiences

[Chavdar Ivanov <ci4ic4%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Tue, 12 May 2020 at 18:38, Martin Husemann <martin%duskware.de@localhost> wrote:
>
> On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 12:10:21PM -0400, MLH wrote:
> > Hmm. I tried the -current installer and though it appeared to
> > indicate it could, I couldn't determine how to without manually
> > creating the gpt partitions.

In case it might be interesting to someone,
http://ci4ic4.tx0.org/n0.webm is a recording I just did of an
installation of yesterday's -current on a EFI VirtualBox guest using
GPT partitioning. It also connects to my local pkgin server and
configures it for further work. The VM was setup initially with LSI
SCSI controller, the installation went without a hitch, but then I
found out that VirtualBox EFI code cannot boot from a SCSI disk, so I
had to move the installed virtual disk onto a SATA controller; this,
of course, went also fine further, as the fstab file records the names
of the GPT slices to mount.

http://ci4ic4.tx0.org/n1.webm shows the first boot and the
installation of a few packages; this mostly works with the exception
of the bits around readline and ncursesw - I was caught by the bump in
the yesterday's -current of /usr/lib/libterminfo.so.2 - the packages
require /usr/lib/libterminfo.so.1. zsh also refuses to install - for
some reason - at the same time as ncursesw; I have to manually 'pkgin
install ncursesw'  first and then zsh; still no idea why  (obviously,
this is not that relevant to the original question).

In my view the NetBSD isntallation experience is not so bad at all
with the latest changes to the installer. As there are way too many
options in case the target disk already has some structure, it is
perhaps prudent to leave it to the person installing - to decide to
clean the disk etc.

>
> See the top part about 9.0 here:
>
>         http://wiki.netbsd.org/Installation_on_UEFI_systems/

I followed that quite a long time ago on my main laptop, EFI-speaking
HP Envy 17; the second disk, also GPT formatted, stores some W10 data,
two Linux distributions and a constantly upgraded NetBSD-current. The
latter boots straight from its .efi file, whereas I have to boot the
Linux distributions from rEFInd; W10 of course boots from the primary
disk as usual. The only gripe i have with HP is that the latest
security updates to the EFI removed the option of having a specific
.efi file as a default boot location and I have to break in the boot
process and navigate manually to the required .efi files...

>
> The difference to non-UEFI systems is minimal (if the installer has been
> booted via BIOS it will do a BIOS install, if by UEFI it will setup an
> EFI boot). Whether you choose MBR or GPT doesn't matter in either case.
>
> But this assumes the disk is not partitioned yet (neither MBR nor GPT present).
>
> Martin



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