The following reply was made to PR pkg/29064; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Hubert Feyrer <hubert@feyrer.de>
To: gnats-bugs@NetBSD.org
Cc: 
Subject: Re: pkg/29064 (fwd)
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2005 10:10:20 +0100 (CET)

 -- 
 NetBSD - Free AND Open!      (And of course secure, portable, yadda yadda)
 
 ---------- Forwarded message ----------
 Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2005 20:11:59 -0800 (PST)
 From: 'TeddyRuxpin' <ruxpin@rillonia.org>
 To: Hubert Feyrer <hubert@feyrer.de>
 Cc: 'TeddyRuxpin' <ruxpin@rillonia.org>
 Subject: Re: pkg/29064
 
 Hi Hubert,
 
 > I'm writing about the problem report you submitted
 
 I'm impressed that I have received a fairly speedy reply from a real person!
 
 >   * I assume you used i386cd.iso and i386pkg.iso from ftp.netbsd.org's
 >     /pub/NetBSD/iso/2.0 directory, yes?
 
 This is correct.
 
 >   * As far as I know, the i386pkg CD boots into the "normal" NetBSD install
 >     routine, just like i386cd.iso does (i386pkg.iso is really i386cd.os
 >     plus binary pkgs).
 
 The i386pkg CD is indeed bootable. It comes up with something called
 'NetBSD-2.0 system installation tool', the executable seems to be
 'sysinstall'. Whether this is a '"normal" NetBSD install' I am not
 qualified to judge.
 
 Your comment 'i386pkg.iso is really i386cd.os plus binary pkgs' confirms
 what I have been suspecting, but what was at first not expected.
 I expected a 'i386pkg' to contain packages only. Why would it contain an os
 installer when there is i386cd that does that?  I am used to Linux CD sets
 that need 4 CDs to contain everything, so one for system install, one for
 packages install seems quite resonable.
 
 >    You say you selected all packages - where exactly
 >     did you select that?
 
 1st page I selected the English option.
 2nd page I selected option C: Re-Install or install addional sets, as
 installing the additional package sets is exactly what I want.
 
 
 The next page is a bit ambiguous about what it is going to do. I am
 expecting to have packages installed, and nothing in packages on my machine
 has any configuation information yet. The OS does, but the message does not
 mention the OS, excet that one should have done an install or upgrade first,
 and that I have done!  Furthermore it says that it 'just fetches and unpacks
 sets onto ... disk', which seems to be exactly what I want, presuming of
 course that it is talking about packages.
 
 The next page request a confim - I did think that a bit over-the-top for
 installing packages, maybe they are worried about overwriting existing
 packages? No worry - I want them all fresh.
 
 It asks for which disk. It is a bit odd that it can't figure out that one
 disk has the /usr/pkgsrc dir on it ready and waiting, and the other disk has
 nothing on it at all yet...
 
 > I don't remember that the system installer
 >     (sysinst) allows installing packages now,
 
 It is on the next page  'Select your distribution' a: Full installation.
 
 b: is Custom installation. I just want all the packages, and don't know what
 to pick or not, so Custom is uninviting.
 
 
 >  and the README.i386pkg file
 >     in the same dir as the i386pkg.iso file explicitly documents to use
 >     pkg_add.
 
 Actually this file is on the i386pkg CD too! But to find it I had to put it
 in my W2K machine and search.
 
 Now if this file popped up from the sysinstall program, or was option to be
 read on the second page of the sysinstall program, I probably would not be
 in this mess.
 
 Better yet - take the system install stuff out of the pkg CD and leave just
 the packages in there! Fix sysinstall to say 'use i386cd to install/upgrade
 os', on only other option is 'install packages'. And do only that.
 
 
 >     Can you please describe the steps you did in detail, after booting
 >     i386pkg?
 
 I hope the above contains enough detail.
 
 >   * Please describe the symptoms of how your system is "broken" after that
 >     step. What does work, what does not work? Does it hang during boot?
 >     What is the last thing you get, are there any error messages, etc.?
 
 After running the a: Full installation option, removing the i386pkg CD,
 and re-booting from HD I got a warning that rc.conf was not configured, and
 it booted in single user mode, filesystem mounted read only.
 
 Recalling that rc.conf needed rc_configured=YES, or you would get this
 situation, I suspected that rc.conf had been damaged, as I had set up quite
 a few things in that file to get the 1.6 system operation a couple months
 back.
 
 However, diagnosing was difficult as I had only ls and cat available. No
 more, less, grep....  I asked around on irc #freebsd, and did get info that
 backps were in /var/backups/....  Looking there I found an rc.conf that
 looked like it was probably what I had set up for 1.6, and had a more likely
 date on it than the 'new' rc.conf, which I think was year 2000.
 
 So I scratched my head some, tried a 'mount -a' - that worked (impressive!)
 and copied the rc.conf over, and re-booted. I got multi-user mode, root login
 with no password. So /etc/passwd has been overwritten too. I set password
 back on root, and used user add to add in the one user I had set up.
 
 The user can run x11, so the user's account configuration may be untouched.
 But I am very unsure about the OS files now. I don't know what else has been
 over-written.
 
 During boot there are now a lot of /etc/rc WARNING:s for things not set
 properly - $ldconfig, $quota, $veriexec, $powerd, $tpctl, $wsmoused, $smmsp,
 $mixercrl, $identd.
 
 As to the packages - /usr/pkgsrc/All du . says 537 megs.  W2k properties on
 the CD All/ directory says 540MYbtes, so I guess I do have all the packages
 off the CD!
 
 Hope this helps the NetBSD project, and that someone maye be able to advise
 me of how to patch up the system here.
 
 Robert Skegg