Hello, I'm a returning NetBSD user, after a hiatus on OpenBSD (since 
1997), with moderate unix experience going back to 1977.  I still have
the 386bsd pile of diskettes sitting on the floor under the desk....

The install is quite different, and I found a number of problem areas.  
I'll write up some problem reports over the next few days, but first I 
thought I'd run them past the group.  I did read recent few months of 
archives, and some of these are already mentioned, but I'm not sure 
which are important enough to PR.

As preparation, I read the i386/INSTALL.TXT and Guide parts 2, 3, 4.

I prepared boot1 and boot2 diskettes.

I downloaded kern-GENERIC, base, etc, and man, and put them on drive G: 
of my MSDOS partitions on the 2nd drive, as I was about to replace the 
OpenBSD partitions.

===

(A) INSTALL step 7: "wd1: no disk label" appeared in a random spot on 
the screen.  

Not true.  OpenBSD is installed.  (When I returned to OpenBSD as 
described later, OpenBSD recognized NetBSD, and even was willing to 
use the disklabel.) 

Solution: make memory images of all drives using mbrlabel (a program I 
found using the web man pages during my struggles).  Recognize more 
systems. 

For reasons described below, mbrlabel needs a change that puts foreign
systems starting at i, rather than a.

===

(B) INSTALL step 7: "Next, depending on whether you are using a wdX or 
sdX disk..." 

This step never happened.  Probably OK, but a documentation issue.

===

(C) INSTALL step 9: I selected Megabytes.  The resulting displays are 
nearly useless.  (I see that this has been mentioned recently.)

Solution: return to the old display, where sectors and cylinders are all 
listed.  I even have some old screens!

wd0         524/64/63       [2112768 sectors]
offset 0

0: 06       0   1   1   -   129  63  63  [    63 +  524097 DOS > 32MB]
1: A6     130   0   1   -   523  66  63  [524160 + 1588608 OpenBSD]
2: 00
3: 00

Insert the number of megabytes in the 3rd column, tighten spacing:

1: A9  775MB    130/0/1 - 523/66/63 [524160+1588608 NetBSD]

===

(D) INSTALL step 9: OpenBSD is listed as Unknown. 

Solution: update the tables.  I see that it works after NetBSD is 
installed, so it's a problem with the installer version of fdisk. 

===

(E) INSTALL step 9: the active partition needs an asterisk.  

I found the hilite to be confusing, especially as I edited the entry, 
and the hilite moved to the edited entry.  The prompts are correct, but
you have to read very carefully. 

Also, the INSTALL documentation needs a better explanation, as you don't 
really need to specify the active partitiion when using bootloader.

===

(F) INSTALL step 10: the disklabel should be initialized with mbrlabel, 
before adding/recalculating NetBSD partitions. 

It is nearly impossible to add a MSDOS partition, especially with the 
paucity of information given by poor fdisk-like display (see problem C).

Besides, the slice information has long since scrolled off the screen.  

As NetBSD wants to boot from label a, and reserves b, c, d, and by 
convention e, the foreign systems need to start later; OpenBSD begins 
with i.

Niels Provos fixed this for OpenBSD, and he's applied to be a NetBSD 
developer, so maybe he'll be willing to work on this? 

===

(G) INSTALL step 10: the disklabel should be initialized with existing 
disklabels, in this case from OpenBSD. 

Of course, NetBSD uses c and d differently, so it would wipe out those 
entries, but still would have saved time. (OpenBSD successfully used the 
NetBSD disklabel.)

===

(H) INSTALL between 11 and 12: "normal set of bootblocks or serial 
bootblocks?" 

No explanation in INSTALL.  Picked "Normal", hope that is OK. 

===

(I) INSTALL between 11 and 12: asked for distribution sets.  This is 
step 19 in INSTALL.  In fact, this is a bad place to ask....

As I had problems finding my distribution sets (described later), I had 
to do this step over and over and over. 

It would be better to go back to the old way, at step 19, after the 
FTP/NFS/CDROM had been found, and only list those files present. 

On one of my passes, I accidentally left misc listed, and it aborted 
later, leaving me to re-do the entire install!  Very annoying! 

===

(J) INSTALL step 17 or 18: I was completedly unable to get either 
method to work on MSDOS.  

I tried many many things, such as shelling out and editing disklabel in 
memory, and mbrlabel, and such.  It would disappear when I was in 
sysinst.  

MOREOVER, when I NFS mounted MSDOS, it still couldn't find kern-GENERIC, 
which appeared as kern-gen.tgz on ls. 

The Guide still says:

  "for example, it is possible to copy all the sets to an existing 
  MS-DOS partition and install from there."

After many hours of frustration, I could not!

(After giving up very unhappy Saturday, I reinstalled OpenBSD on the 
test system Sunday, and NFS mounted the files, and tried to NFS install 
from another system.  As mentioned above, this still didn't work.  I had 
to copy and rename them in ffs.) 

===

(K) INSTALL step 17: NFS worked from mounted ffs, with several problems. 

(K1) network setup used a classful netmask.

(K2) router and DNS setup (which was not needed, but will be used after 
installation), caused long waits for pings (several minutes), as I was 
offline at the time....  Two prompts about network failure. 

(K3) the 2nd time (after the abort for accidentally including misc), 
still had these annoying long waits and the 2 prompts.  It remembered 
the settings, and should remember the answers to the 2 prompts.

(K4) IPv6 auto didn't work, and required redoing everything.  

(K5) For Host and Directory prompts, would prefer better prompt system 
more like network, instead of blank page with menu item.  Better yet, 
it could list possible directories after the mount, and allow menu 
choices. 

===

(L) INSTALL step 19: now would be a better time for asking which sets!

This was completely different.

===

(M) INSTALL step 19: "Before extraction begins, you can elect to watch" 

never asked.

showed "pax -zrpe -f" prompts while unpacking.

2nd time around, several minute long delay, no prompts?
eventually showed pax prompts while unpacking.

I'll note that INSTALL says "tar -xpf" in some places, and "tar -zxpf" 
others, but not "pax -zrpe -f".

===

(N) INSTALL step 19: "If you have already configured networking, you 
will be asked if you want to use this configuration for normal 
operation." 

long pauses, no prompt.
then, seemed to hang after network prompt.

===

(O) INSTALL step 19: "The next menu will allow you to select the time 
zone that you're in...."

time zones not alphabetical, hard to select, a multi-level menu would be 
better.

===

(P) INSTALL step 20: "Congratulations..."

Should reboot here, rather than taking back to the main menu.  Very 
confusing, I tried eXit, which was definitely not what I wanted!
 
-- 
William Allen Simpson
    Key fingerprint =  17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26  DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32