On Sun, Feb 27, 2000 at 01:14:02PM -0800, Bill Studenmund wrote:
> Why not kern.tgz? In general you should always have a kernel as current as
> your userland.

Just successfully compiled a 1.4T kernel with all my hardware pinnings
and BUFPAGES setting, and I put it at /netbsd-14P and will move it to
/netbsd by mounting the drive at /mnt from the boot floppy.

I guess, if worst comes to worst and that kernel won't boot, I can go
back to the floppy move it back to (/mnt)/netbsd-14P, and install
kern.tgz after all (I'll have to remove some RAM if I go this route),
but I don't foresee that being a problem.

> As time goes by, new syscalls get added, and libc (and other libraries and
> programs) get updated to use them. If you have a libc and/or programs
> written for syscalls your kernel lacks, you will have a lot of core
> dumping. Some times it doesn't matter much, sometimes even init won't
> work (i.e. you won't boot). :-)

Well, hey I persuaded a 1.4P kernel to boot on a 1.4.1 system, so...

[dump a backup]
> Probably not a bad idea.

Yeah, but they're mostly occupied right now, I don't want to wait for
the dump, and I'm feeling courageous yet stupid.

(Should the next email from me be a report of disaster, let this be a
lesson to those reading the archives...)

> Not really, other than possibly ripping the OF out of another 7500. It's
> only recently that OF has been made upgradable. :-)

Bleh. Oh well.

> As above, not recomended. You might be able to get away with it, you might
> not.

Understood. :^>

> That would be the best. :-)

Done.

> I think you're fine on this one. I think the most that might happen is
> that the upgrade might run mtree to fix up the permissions on some files &
> directories. But that will only happen on directories NetBSD ships.
> /chroot shouldn't be touched.

Actually, I just did this on a few mac68k machines... everything not
specifically overwritten by the tar file (which is decompressed with
pax on the floppy in macppc and from the installer in mac68k) remains
untouched, even in directories that the tar file contains.

That is, of course, the documented behavior, but it's good to know
that it behaves.

> You mentioned MAKEDEV in another message. It's in etc.tgz. I usually untar
> it somewhere off to the side, and manually merge. :-)

Actually, MAKEDEV is in base.tgz, MAKEDEV.local is in etc.tgz (go
figure).

To be safe, I'm preserving my current MAKEDEV before doing the
install.

       ~ g r @ eclipsed.net