On Wed, 2 May 2001, Jacob Smith wrote:
> I have done several linux installs in the past and all have been from 
> cd, but I really don't understand how to get started with the install 
> of netBSD on a raq2.  I really did look for instructions on how to 
> get started but I can't find any on the site.
> 
> Could someone please point me in the right direction, I would really 
> appreciate it.

Ha, I did exactly that yesterday. :-)

Please have a look at the NetBSD/cobalt FAQ first:
http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/cobalt/faq.html

What I did was:
 * setup a serial console

 * setup netbooting

 * setup the disk. The disk that comes in the Raq2 has four partitions:

    1 - linux root (/)
    2 - linux swap
    3 - linux /var
    4 - linux /home

   /home was an almost empty 3GB partition. From the netbooted system,
   I copied the disk's /home data over to /var, just in case I need it
   ever again ("disklabel wd0" will tell you the partitions in
   question are wd0e for the linux root, wd0f for the linux swap, wd0g
   for linux /var and wd0h for linux /home; they can be checked with 
   "fsck -t ext2fs /dev/wd0e" etc., mounting is done with "mount -t
   ext2fs /dev/wd0e /mnt" etc.). then I replaced the disk ID for the 4th
   partition (131, linux userland) with 169 for NetBSD. After that, I
   updated the disklabel (reboot ; dIsklabel wd0 >x ; disklabel -r -R wd0
   x). In the new NetBSD disklabel, I made partition 'a' (netbsd
   root) occupy the place that the old linux /home partition was, and and
   I decided to use the Linux swap partition (wd0f or so) as netbsd
   swap. I left linux /var alone, and the linux root dir too, but I put
   that into /etc/fstab so I can access the /boot dir on it, so I can put
   my own compressed netbsd kernel as netbsd.gz in there. 

After that, I was able to boot from disk, setup /etc/rc.conf, build my own
kernel (that has IPv6, but not IPsec etc. for conserving space). 

If you get it going and want to update the release notes or similar, let
us know. The cobalt port seems to lack some volunteer document slaves. ;)


 - Hubert

P.S.: After writing this mail i realized i could update the FAQ for
      that. I'll do so now, and the changes will show up on the web
      site within an hour or two. I'd appreciate any input! X-)

-- 
Hubert Feyrer <hubert.feyrer@informatik.fh-regensburg.de>