On Sat, Jan 06, 2001 at 12:28:53AM -0800, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
> On Sat, 6 Jan 2001 hubert@feyrer.de wrote:
> 
> > ... for this: http://bsd.tucows.com/conhtml/preview/74141.html
> 
> Besides the article's several problems (wrong license, license link URL is
> bad, download calls NetBSD a "FreeBSD Version", and various other
> misunderstandings), the review says it easily installs under i386, "but on
> many of the other platforms you have to set it up manually to boot from
> another machine." Is this true ("many")?
> 
> How many is "many"?
> 
> Or do several other ports install the same as i386 or just as easy?
> 
> Any examples?

for example, sparc or alpha can also boot from floppy if the machine has
one, so install is as easy as i386.
This is also true for platforms that can boot from CD; provided you can burn a
CD image.
However, especially for older Unix machines, the recommended method to install
the OS was either boot from tape or boot from net. As not every machine has
a tape drive, the common method was to boot from net. This is not a NetBSD
limitation, but a limitation of the hardware.

I'd also add that I prefer from far installing from netboot than any other
method (when possible) for the following reasons:
- you have a better environnement than with a boot floppy (more binaries,
  you can have a real editor, etc ...)
- once you've setup the netboot env, it remains. If, for wathever reason, the
  boot disk fail, just netboot again and you can quickly fix the problem.
- If you have several machine to install, it's very easy to setup an automated
  install with a netboot.

Being able to netboot (and even if hardware doesn't support it: I have boot
floppy with a diskless kernel for i386) is a major point for me.

--
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
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