On Mon, 4 Mar 1996 10:28:01 -0800  dwatkins@glenayre.com wrote:
> 
> The edit function of disklabel attempts to invoke the "vi" text editor so 
> you can add the entry for the MSDOS partition.  Unfortunately VI is not on
> the boot kernel intall floppy nor the installation floppy.  Fortunately
> I had access to a UNIX system to unpack the distribution and grab selected
> executables and then FTP them to my PC (under DOS/Windows).  I wrote them to
> floppy and then used the "Load_fd" command to read these in.  This took a
> couple of attempts since I needed some shared libraries to get VI to work.
> I grabbed all the shared libraries since I didn't know the minimum required
> for VI.
> 
> Please consider creating a ".fs" or a small ....tar.gz file capable of fittin
g
> into a single floppy which will expand the bare bones NetBSD system sufficien
t
> to allow extracting the rest of the system from an MSDOS file system.  An
> alternative would be to allow entry of the MSDOS file system parameters
> during installation as has been suggested by others.

But you already have it :-)

ed(1) is contained on the install floppy (for 1.0 and 1.1 at least).  If
you set the EDITOR environmental variable to ed then disklabel(8) should
call for ed at the outset.  Basically, if you do know how to use ed and
disklabel, it's possible to install from just a kernel copy floppy, the 
install floppy, and a MS-DOG partition with the distribution.  Done
several times, and have t-shirts to prove it :-)

Altho, someone (me probably) should send-pr a fix for making sure EDITOR
and VISUAL get set to the right thing just for the install process...