Re: Macintosh LCIII - NetBSD

[David Brownlee <abs%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On 15 January 2011 15:45, Dan Whitehouse <crab%dim-sum.org@localhost> wrote:
> Hi, I keep looking at my LCIII and when I have the mental strength I might 
> have another try at installing NetBSD.
> I tried 3.1.1 with no luck - I attemped a sysinst install and it failed 
> making filesystems (see previous posts to the list).
> John Klos very kindly provided me with a test kernel but again, I had no luck.
> I know that once upon a time I had a 1.x series NetBSD working on here, so my 
> plan is to work backwards.
>
> My next attempt will be using 2.1 probably with the traditional method.
> If I can get a working system what are my chances of ever upgrading it?

Generally if you have a running NetBSD system you can upgrade it by
dropping on a new kernel, rebooting,
running some quick tests then extracting the matching userland and
running the postinstall script to clean up.
Some potential issues:

- If you are starting from an ancient system using a.out rather than
ELF binaries things get more complicated
- Sometimes on some ports the bootloader interface changes, requiring
upgrade of boot blocks before kernel
- Handling changes to /etc - the postinstall script is very good at
merging in changes, but can get it wrong

Just a quick question - does a -current kernel give the same issue -
eg, from http://nyftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-daily/HEAD/201101121500Z/mac68k/