Excerpts from netbsd: 31-Mar-97 Re: building distributions/.. Jason
Thorpe@nas.nasa.go (699)

>  >   How do you generate the images? Do you have securelevel = -1, or what?
> 
> Currently, yes.  But, as Matthias noted, it should be possible to
> modify installboot to work on unmounted devices.

There is a new "installboot" at
zelof1.zel.kfa-juelich.de:/pub/NetBSD/bootcode/installboot-970407.tar.gz.

This version works with unmounted disk partitions too.
This allows to install boot sectors on unmounted disks
in securelevel 1.
Please try this in your environment and report if there
are bugs.

best regards
Matthias Drochner