On Tue, May 15, 2001 at 02:46:09PM -0700, James Kliegel wrote:
> Hello All:
> 
> As a newbie I am trying one of everything and crashing and burning every
> other step. All part of the adventure.

Been there. Still doing that...
 
> Lately I tried to compile my own kernel and install it, as a prelude to
> messing about with the code. I copied the GENERIC configuration file and
> made what seemed to be appropriate changes. After an ~20 hour compile (and
> one or two false starts, forgetting to select CODA files) I had a kernel.
> When attempting to boot it the booter gets to the "and I sez to him" point,
> where the normal boot commandeers the screen and starts spewing NetBSD boot
> messages, and freezes. Hmmm. After some wrestling I recovered the previous
> kernel and am back up and running.

My strategy would be to change one option at a time. Yes, I know it means a
20 hour compile each time, but at least you know you'll eventually find out
what you need. A slightly quicker option if you are very methodical is to
keep halving the number of changes until you track down the one that is
causing the problem.

> Also on an unrelated topic how can I ftp NetBSD packages. I am not up on the
> net yet, and even if I were my slow modem/ISP would preclude downloading
> large (> 1-2K . . . kidding 8-) files. So I want to ftp tarballs at work and
> copy them to a zip to take home. I tried to ftp from ftp.netbsd.org and some
> of the mirrors but could not get it to work. That is the sites seemed to be
> dead, or dead slow, and would not even return the README, or package
> index.html. What is the recommended method to get packages other than doing
> a make in /usr/pkgsrc and automagically downloading from the net?

I've had problems accessing files on ftp.netbsd.org from work through a
firewall. I found Internet Explorer mostly wouldn't do it, but a dedicated
FTP program might. You probably need passive FTP.

Are you sure you need to compile the packages from source? You'll save a lot
of effort and headaches if you pkg_add the pre-compiled binaries. See the
man page, but suffice to say pkg_add easily acts on a tar ball you downloaded
earlier.

If you are building the sources, then make fetch-list > fetchlist.sh will
create a shell script that you can run (on a UNIX box) at work to download
the files you need. Bear in mind that you will generally need a *lot* of
files when you are just starting out. There's a whole heap of stuff needed
just for building the actual package you wanted usually. Don't go there
unless you have to! Before you can even start, you need to download 
pkgsrc.tar.gz and unpack that. That's a seriously large file that will take
forever to untar. There's a file Packages.txt that is essential reading.
I can't remember where I got this from, but you should find it easily
enough on ftp.netbsd.org.

> Thanks very much in advance.
>
> James

Hope that helped. If you need help getting ppp up and running, you could do
worse than consult the HOWTOs and the NetBSD operating system guide by
Federico Lupi. The latter is also good for package information. Start at the
documentation section on the website.

Ian