Hi!

I always wonder, why it does not appear in the INSTALL text
nor in the FAQ: Installing NetBSD from a SunOS partition.

I do this all the time, since SunOS is still my production
OS for my Sun3's. BTW: This works on Sparc's too.

You need: A Sun3 (or Sun3x or Sparc) running SunOS 4.1.X
and a harddisk for installing NetBSD.

Proceed as follows: 
Plug your new disk to the SunOS machine. While still on
SunOS, partition the disk (uh, IMHO SunOS' format is WAY
better than NetBSD's edlabel) suiting your needs.
I'd recommend 32MB root, four times the main memory
as swap and 200MB for /usr. A server should get extra
/var and /export partitions. If you install a lot of 
other software, add a /usr/local partition too.

Make the rest of the disk a partition of it's own or
(for a server) use one of the partitions, that's not
needed during the installation, newfs it and copy all
the NetBSD installation stuff onto it.
Important: This partition is only needed during the
installation and you can reuse it afterwards.

NetBSD uses the berkeley fast file system, known as
FFS or UFS. SunOS uses this too, although their
implementation is rather old, but still compatible.

Now 'dd' the miniroot to the swap partition:
	# dd if=miniroot of=/dev/rsd2b bs=100k conv=sync

Halt SunOS and boot into the miniroot:
	# halt
	> b sd(0,8,1)

Start the installation:
	# ./install.sh

If asked, where the install sets are, say, they're on
a separate partition and answer the questions so the
install script can mount this partition.
Hint: While SunOS uses fixed device names for fixed
SCSI-ID's, NetBSD does not! It scans the bus and
allocates the devices as needed. Simply watch the
kernel probing the devices and find out the device
name then.

Voila!

Peter