Subject: Questions re Installation from Hard Drive
To: None <tech-install@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Tom Ptacek <lblack@onshore.com>
List: tech-install
Date: 05/28/1995 05:46:32
Configuration: A 486 PC with two IDE (Maxtor) hard disks, 500 and 100
megs respectively, a single 1.44M floppy drive, and extraneous equipment
(CD-ROM drive, etc) none of which I intend to involve in the installation.
My 500M hard disk is currently filled with a single 100 meg DOS partition
and two ext2fs Linux partitions. Nothing on the 500M hard drive is
critical, so I intend to overwrite everything except DOS if at all possible.
The 100M hard disk is currently an ext2fs Linux partition, but I intend
to erase it in the installation process.
Question: I'm downloading the current binary distribution (1.0A) from
netbsd.org onto my 100M drive. My current configuration seems to be
prohibitive (as is my financial situation...) towards installing the
entire operating system via floppy disk, as I only have one drive and the
documentation seems to indicate that NetBSD requires two to install from.
What I'd LIKE to do is find a way to extract the sets from my 100M hard
disk. Nothing in the installation documentations explains exactly how one
would go about doing this. I've read all the archived posts on the
tech-install list and have gotten some vague assistance, but I'm still
unsure of exactly what I need to do in order to install from a hard drive.
Booting solely from the installation floppies, is there a way I can get
NetBSD to recognize an MS-DOS partition on the 100M drive? Exactly what
do I need to do to make this work? I know the geometry for the disk in
question (and am aware of the track/sector conventions involved), but the
only information I could glean from current postings involved the usage
of the disklabel command (the man page for which gave no information as
to how this command would facilitate mounting a hard drive) and the
disktab file.
Any information you could give me as to how to get the installation media
to recognize already-existing partitions on a hard drive would be
appreciated. I am fairly confident that I know everything else I'll need
to know once I can get the DOS filesystem mounted.
I noticed (as I mentioned before) that the INSTALL document doesn't
mention anything about this procedure. I'm sure you're all probably aware
that installing off of a hard drive is the FIRST option you want to look
at if you're installing an OS off the net... floppies are a pain. Linux
documents the procedure fairly well, and I remember FreeBSD outlining it
as well. You'd eliminate quite a few redundant questions from this list
if detailed partitioning and installation instructions were included with
the INSTALL document.
In any case, I'd be more than happy to write up a summary of how this is
done, as long as I'm given enough information to do so. I'm fairly
disgusted by Linux, so it'd make ME feel better to see fewer users put
off by installation difficulties and pointed towards Linux. =)
I'm really eager to get started coding under NetBSD, so any tips would be
GREATLY appreciated. THanks for you're time.
Peace.
As.