Thank you, Jeremy.  Your help took me to the next step.  But
I did have to get two floppies (1.44M) to get access to sysinst.
It probably would have been possible to have used GNU/Linux
cfdisk (from wd0, AKA hda) to format the NetBSD drive (wd1,
AKA hdc).  Then the whole system image might have been
downloaded to and expanded on the GNU/Linux drive to be copied
to the NetBSD drive.  File system integrity would have needed
to be checked closely and exhaustively after using such method,
though--a potentially very time consuming task.

    So I wanted to use sysinst, and the floppies had to be obtained.
...in the process of downloading the .tgz files to the GNU/Linux
drive for the 1.6 starter system to include X.  Sysinst should be
able to grab them from there (as per your help), expand them *and
put the resulting subdirectories and files in their proper
places* on the NetBSD drive.  There are good things written around
the Net about NetBSD security and not so much system integrity
discretion left to users and admins (although we can spot check
security in the system and have security software check it as we
go).

    I'm taking notes on some parts of the install for a rough draft.
The resulting documentation will be offered to the maintainer(s)
of existing documentation to use as they please.


							_Art

Jeremy C. Reed wrote:

 > (You use the term "packages", but I believe you mean "sets".)
 >
 > You can install from an unmounted filesystem. The INSTALL documentation
 > says: "you will need to specify the device that the file system resides on
 > (for example sd1e) the type of the file system, and the directory on the
 > specified file system where the sets are located."
 >
 > Th INSTALL kernel for i386 includes support for the Linux ext2fs
 > filesystem.
 >
 > Also have a look at the INSTALL documentation included with the downloads.
 >
 > Good luck,
 >
 >    Jeremy C. Reed
 >    http://bsd.reedmedia.net/
 >
 >