In message <200305051224.AA880673014@cnnx.org>, "michael donohoe" writes:
>
>Hi,
>
>I'm new to NetBSD and wondering if anyone can point me to good
>install quides/faqs (other than those linked from netbsd.org)?
>
>It would be even better if anyone had time to advise me on my
>problem:
>
>I'm installing NetBSD on an IBM Thinkpad A20m, formerly running
>Win98. I created the 2 install floppies using bootlap1.fs and bootlap2.fs.
>Starting the laptop with these failed on reading the 2nd disk. This was
>also the case for using boot1.fs and boot2.fs. The only one that working
>for me was using boot-small.fs on a single floppy.
>
>Install failed with this error: "Failed: openpty() failed" because the install
> 
>kernel doesn't have /dev/pty*. The way to fix this according to  a posting,
>(http://www.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/query-pr-single.pl?number=18630),
>is to add /bin/dd to boot-small.fs, or add following to /.profile
>
> (cd /dev; ./MAKEDEV opty)
>
>How do I do this? Bear in mind I can no longer boot Windows on my machine
>since the botched install and when I boot up with boot-small there is no edito
>r
>to make changes to .profile. Anyone have any other ideas for a fix???
>

I'm not sure where the failure is, so I can't be certain of this 
advice.  However -- sysinst has a shell exit option; you can use that 
and type the commands yourself.  You could also do

	echo '(cd /dev; ./MAKEDEV opty)' >>/.profile

but that's only going to write to the ramdisk; it won't modify the 
boot-small floppy.  You could mount the boot floppy on /mnt and do
this:

	echo '(cd /dev; ./MAKEDEV opty)' >>/mnt/.profile

The command for that is probably

	mount /dev/fd0a /mnt

or something similar, but I haven't tried it lately.

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb (me)
		http://www.wilyhacker.com (2nd edition of "Firewalls" book)