On Thu, 19 Nov 1998, Wayne Stewart wrote:

> >The installer
> >can handle a gzipped kernel, but it will have to be unzipped and
> >renamed in order for "ps" and friends to work properly. He can use
> >"mount -a; gunzip -c netbsd-GENERIC.gz >/netbsd". I'm fairly
> >certain all this is in the installation notes.
> 
> yes seems OK,  Where was this in the install notes though?  Maybe I am
> reading the wrong set of notes!

Let's see... There are instructions to install either kern.tgz, or
kern_sbc.tgz, along with rest of the sets. Then, later it says:

"Additional kernels to those included in the distribution sets may be
 found in the "mac68k/binary/kernels" subdirectory of the NetBSD 1.3.2
 distribution tree.  These kernels are generally named something like
 "netbsd-GENERIC.gz" or some other suitable name.  Please note that
 these kernels are simply gzipped and are not in tar archives."

You're not the very first person to have trouble with this. You could
always submit a pr for a document change request. See "man 1 send-pr"