bgrayson@ece.utexas.edu (Brian C. Grayson) writes:
> I realized
> there's an option that is not covered in the INSTALL document --
> temporarily putting a new hard disk in an existing NetBSD machine,
> getting the hard drive set up, and then moving the hard drive to
> the destination machine.  

In a sane world this method would seem to be better.  The PC world
isn't sane.

I just tried to build a portable's 2-gig IDE drive using the
previously unused IDE interface on my netbsd machine's motherboard.
Problem 1: the IDE connector on the disk is quite a bit smaller than
the IDE connector on the IDE cable.  Off to Fry's to get an adaptor
($6.95 in the disk section).  Next problem the machine refuses to boot
with the IDE hooked up.  It appears the BIOS only has settings for
"floppy, hard disk, cdrom, network".  Even though the bios obviously
just probed all the disks, even told me the manufacturers strings, it
insists on booting from the only uninitialized disk in the box: wd0.
Ok, stick in a floppy w. a bootstrap.  Type "Boot sd0a:netbsd".
"netbsd not found" huh!  sh*t!  Ok.  Don't panic.  Lets try a boot
from an older snapshot on sd1.  "Boot sd1a:netbsd" It boots and comes
up with root on sd0a.  huh????  Play around with disklabel and fdisk
making a label.  newfs all partitions. tar | tar copy all partitions.
Hand edit /etc/hosts, ifconfig.ep0, gated.conf etc.  halt machine.
install the disk into portable.  find the os-bs floppy.  Install
os-bs.  boot.  "no operating system".  ARRG.  boot an install floppy.
check out the ide disklabel.  Notice that it says "no label" and the
fdisk label now says 32 reserved sectors instead of the 1 cylinder
(1008 sectors).

Yea.  Installing via cloning is sure easier. ;-)

-wolfgang