On 14 Sep 1998, MICHAEL LARKIN wrote:

> Well, I took some advice and installed -current (19980905 at the time), trying
> to fix the incorrect df output I had been getting from the previous version.
> 
> After installing, setting devices, and rebooting, I got a 
> 
> "incorrect or undefined system call"

You updated your userland (all the programs) without updating the kernel.
Programs get updated to take advantage of new kernel features. You had
programs which wanted non-existant (in your kernel) features.

> message upon booting, at the point where it was going to check rc.conf.
> 
> Booting into the single user shell would allow me to examine "/", but not
> allow me to mount anything (same error message upon execution of the mount
> command).
> 
> Solution:
> 
> I repartitioned the drive into one giant partition (not my first choice, but
> seeing as how it's only 200M, I don't really care), and reinstalled
> 1.3.2 "release" version. 

A -current kernel would have worked too...

> Another question: The root filesystem is 160MB, and I've loaded 59MB of data
> into it. Why does the free space only show 80MB? I could understand a little
> loss, but 20MB of loss in 59MB of data? Isn't that a little large? None of the
> other NetBSD system's I've loaded (Sparc, i386, VAX, alpha) experience this
> sort of behavoir.... 

Did you look at the free space before installing anything?

ffs file systems always need a certain amount of free space to function
properly. Normally it's 10%. So what the OS does is reserve about 10%
(settable per fs) of its space, and the remainder is the "available"
space.  20 MB is a little over 10% (16 MB), so it's reasonable, though
maybe a little high.

Take care,

Bill