Wow!  Installing NetBSD is getting interesting.  First of all, I 
have access to no docs on Sun3 machines (if I wanted Sparc, DECs of any 
shade, SGIs, or even HPs I could get them quite easily).  Also, my 
"low-level" background has been mostly Ultrix.  So, I pretty much have to 
rely on this list.  I hope my questions do not sound that stupid. =)

While shopping for shruberries, Tom Samplonius pondered:
> 
> On Wed, 20 Dec 1995, Mauricio Tavares wrote:
> 
> > 	About netbooting, wouldn't that require, as far as I could gather 
> > from the guide, that I will need to start the 3/50 from a tape anyway.  
> > If that is true, shouldn't I simply use the tape to install netbsd in the 
> > first place?  I am confused.
[...]
> 
>   No, Sun's boot rom can tftp a kernel from a server.  It can be tricky 
> to configure the boot server correctly though.  Sun's can run completely 
> diskless, with even swap mounted via NFS.  You probably just want to 
> netboot the netbsd-rd kernel once for the install, and once everything is 
> setup boot from your hard drive.
> 
	How would I go about booting the machine diskless and then using tftp 
to get the kernel?  From the 1.1 docs, I understood that you would first 
have to have access to either a tape drive or NFS server.

About using a NFS server, could I use a DEC box (Alpha or ideally (as far 
as I am concerned) Ultrix box) as the server for the 3/50?  If so, how 
would I go about that (I never set up a NFS server)?

>   Remember:  your hard drive needs to have SCSI parity disabled for you 
> to boot from it.  Non-boot drives don't matter.
> 
	Thanks for the info!

> > > > 	o I do not remember seeing much stuff in the install documentation 
> > > > 	  regarding partitioning a drive before installing NetBSD.  Is it 
> > > > 	  assumed we are using the default configuration, whatever it 
> > > > 	  might be?
> > > 
> > >   The installation guide is a little thin in this area.  You do need to 
> > > partition the disk into slices for root, swap and /usr.
> > > 
> > 	That I understand.  However, if I am not mistaken the a partition 
> > defaults to 32MB, the b also is 32MB, and so on.  I know that I can 
> > change that *once* I have a live machine to play with, but how to go 
> > about doing that *before* having a fully operation netbsd box?
> 
>   No.  You can only set this *before* installing.  Once you boot the 
> installer, you get access to a disk partition tool.  Once the disk is 
> partitioned, you can copy the miniroot to the disk, and boot from it, and 
> finish installing the rest of the system binaries.
> 
	Given the 1GB drive I will eventually put on the machine 
(whenever it arrives, that is), what would be the recommended partition 
sizes to run NetBSD in the 3/50?  I myself though on having one partition 
big enough for the basic root stuff (32-50MB is big enough?), another 
30-40MB for swap since I do not have that much RAM, and the rest for /usr.

-- 

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| Mauricio Tavares          | "We will attack...                          |
| raub@kushana.aero.ufl.edu |  ...under the cover of daylight!" Rimmer    |
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