[ In a fit of frustration, Shawn said: ]

> Not to flame you Ken, but I know on MacPerl, whenever a new user asks for
> help (either to the list or to me), I always try to help however I can.
> Even if they only know that Perl is language they might want to learn, or
> use, but they don't know why.  Oh, and I have written my own stuff, and
> written my own docs, but they don't really need docs if you have 1/2 a wit.
> MacBSD, with its tons of mirrors, is driving me insane as to what is the
> _MOST_ current as far as docs and software goes.  I JUST WANT TO GET A
> RUNNING SYSTEM SO I CAN GET THE SNAPSHOTS MYSELF AND USE THEM!!!!!!!!!  HOW
> CAN I DO THAT WITHOUT A RUNNING SYSTEM??????

Shawn,
You don't need to yell. The people on this list _are_ trying to help.
What you have already been told by other members on this list is correct.
You missed the fact that the Installer installs snapshots onto a disk prepared 
for NetBSD, even if it did not previously have a NetBSD system running on it.

A snapshot is simply a compressed tar file (like file.tar.gz). You need to 
install at least two of the snapshots, base.tar.gz and etc.tar.gz plus a 
kernel snapshot to get NetBSD running. For a full system, there are additional 
snapshots. 

In brief:
Prepare your target disk using a formatting and partitioning utility and then
use mkfs to create a UNIX filesystem on the partitions. This has
been discussed recently on the list. The MacOS mkfs is available at the 
sites below. 
Use the Installer to INSTALL the 2 SNAPSHOTS and a kernel SNAPSHOT.
Use the Booter to BOOT.

These things are available at puma.bevd.blacksburg.va.us or ftp.eskimo.com
(in /u/w/wormey)

And if you don't like the current status of the docs/mirror sites/whatever,
feel free to donate your time as others on this list do to support the effort.
Everyone here knows there can be improvements, but most of us have real, paying
jobs that take up a lot of our time and limit the amount of time free time we
have to work on NetBSD.

	--John

--
--------------------------------------------------------------
 John Wittkoski				InSoft, Inc.
 Senior Systems Engineer                Phone: (717) 730-9501
 Email: jpw@insoft.com                  Fax  : (717) 730-9504
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