I just tried to upgrade my 1.5.2 (Sparc) system to 1.5.3 and ran
into several problems:

First of all, when I tried to untar NetBSD-1.5.3/source/syssrc.tgz
from ftp.netbsd.org, I discovered that the archive is corrupt.  I
downloaded it twice and got the same result each time.

Next, I checked out the NetBSD source with the netbsd-1-5-PATCH003
tag.  I used the kernel configuration file I successfully used in
the past to build a 1.5.2 kernel to configure the kernel.  I then
ran make depend and make and was able to successfully build a 1.5.3
kernel.  After installing the new kernel as /netbsd, I upgraded
all the binaries on the system to 1.5.3 binaries and rebooted.

Here is the error message I got on the system console when the
bootloader tried to load the new kernel:

Boot device: /iommu/sbus/espdma@5,8400000/esp@5,8800000/sd@1,0:a  File and args: netbsd
>> NetBSD/sparc Secondary Boot, Revision 1.9
>> (toor@proxima, Tue Aug 21 23:18:13 CST 2001)
Booting netbsd
netbsd: Inappropriate file type or format

I tried rebuilding a second kernel to see if I may have done
something wrong the first time but got the exact same result when
I tried to reboot it.

Unfortunately, I have now had to go back to the 1.5.2 kernel and
replace all my 1.5.3 binaries with 1.5.2 binaries since there are
some incompatibilities (such as the packet filter) between the
1.5.2 kernel and the 1.5.3 binaries.

Shall I send-pr these problems or is there something else I should
try first?

--
Bill Dorsey
dorsey at lila dot com