Jeff Wyman wrote:

>What's the deal with sysinst on 1.5? I keep hearing about using sysinst on
>mac68k, but can't seem to find anything on it in the mac68k install
>docs. Is this functionality still in -current?
>
>Let me know where "tfm" is about sysinst/mac68k if I need to rtfm :)

Sysint is the way most other NetBSD ports do system installations.  The 
Mac68k port didn't use it because of difficulties in dealing with the 
Apple Disk Partition Map and because we had the MacOS install utilities 
(Mkfs and the Installer).  While working on an updated version of Mkfs I 
got an idea how to do sysinst for the mac68k port and developed it under 
NetBSD 1.3.2 with the idea that it would be part of 1.4.  Unfortunately 
because of problems with my system and 1.4 I wasn't able to move the code 
to 1.4 in time for the release.  Colin Wood stepped in and did the 
conversion for 1.4, but we found a problem with disk partitioning that we 
couldn't resolve in time.  The code was moved into -current though and 
starting with 1.4.2 Frederick Bruckman included Installation Kernels with 
sysinst. With the push on for 1.5 Scott Reynolds asked Allen Briggs to 
look at the code and try to get it running for 1.5.  At that time the 
last problem I was aware of was a change to the kernel to allow sysinst 
access to write and then read the new Apple Disk Partition Map.  I don't 
know if this was done.  Someone else was asked to look over the Install 
documenation - Michael ?? -- and he did this.  I'm not sure what the 
final decision was but it appears that Installation Kernels with sysinst 
were built for both 1.4.3 and 1.5, but the updated INSTALL documentation 
wasn't included.  The original changes for the documenation are in the PR 
system, and the proposed INSTALL documents, with those changes, are 
available on my system.

  ftp://murphy.dyndns.org/pub/sysinst/INSTALL.{html,ps,txt}

Basically sysinst/mac68k has been around and working (for me) since 
1.3.2.  It's been available and mostly working for others since 1.4.2, 
and it appears it may be very functional for 1.5.  You boot up the 
Installation Kernel with the Booter and you're running NetBSD out of a 
RAM disk which contains all the installation tools you need to partition 
your disk and install the system from CDROM, FTP or NFS. HFS/HFS+ is 
_NOT_ supported (yet).  No more Mkfs or Installer and their associated 
problems.  However, the system is installed with a newer filesystem that 
isn't backwards compatible with Mkfs and the Installer!  The Booter works 
mainly because sysinst insists on creating separate root and usr 
partitions.

Hope this helps,
-bob