Recovering from botched update? (NetBSD guide feedback also!)

[David Chanters <david.chanters%googlemail.com@localhost>]

Hi all,

So I decided in my infinite wisdom to follow the following guide:

http://www.NetBSD.org/docs/guide/en/chap-updating.html

Following section "33.1.5" the first problem I noticed was the
instructions don't tell you to build anything in tools, which meant I
couldn't compile anything anyway -- this ought to be fixed, I think?
I think this was noted here:

http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-users/2010/01/16/msg005384.html

I am not qualified to make a decision either way, but i think the
"chap-updating.html" could do with simplifying for someone like me new
to NetBSD following this for the first time.  Indeed, someone called
"ASau" was kind enough to help me, but even he agrees that page needs
simplifying --- and I would help, if I knew just how that's meant to
be done.

I thought I had followed the instructions properly (a gripe I have
with this page is it's not obvious where the separation is between
*compiling* and *installing*), but it seems something has gone wrong
since I now have a very broken NetBSD installation.

Thankfully this is still in a VBox install on my Linux machine, but I now find:

*** Failed target:  installworld
*** Failed command: _makedirtarget() { dir="$1"; shift; target="$1";
shift; case "${dir}" in /*) this="${dir}/"; real="${dir}" ;; .)
this=""; real="/usr/src" ;; *) this="${dir}/"; real="/usr/src/${dir}"
;; esac; show=${this:-.}; echo "${target} ===> ${show%/}${1:+ (with:
$@)}"; cd "${real}" && /usr/obj/tooldir.NetBSD-5.0.1-i386/bin/nbmake
_THISDIR_="${this}" "$@" ${target}; }; _makedirtarget distrib/sets
installsets INSTALLDIR=/ INSTALLSETS=
*** Error code 1

Stop.
nbmake: stopped in /usr/src
[1]   Bad system call (core dumped) cat >&2 <<...
[1]   Bad system call (core dumped) rm -r -f "/tmp/n...
netbsd$ ls
Bad system call (core dumped)
netbsd$ ls
Bad system call (core dumped)
netbsd$ ls
Bad system call (core dumped)
netbsd$

... I daren't reboot the VBox image yet --- what's gone wrong, and
what, if anything bar reinstalling can I do to fix this botch?

TIA,

David