Peter,

In short, I've been too busy fixing bugs, improving Ultrix emulation
mode, and updating the TC code to look at the installation
instructions.  I don't read the NetBSD newsgroups. (I don't read *any*
of Usenet much any more, actually.)  If you're getting advice to post
to this mailing list, that's probably the right advice.

I haven't ever tried to follow Arne's instructions.  I don't know
where they're incorrect.  I haven't got an up-to-date copy.
The best shot *I* had at writing instructions is the NetBSD/pmax
web page.

I *think* the biggest bug in those instructions (and possibly Arne's)
is with copying a miniroot.  The miniroots I and Arne made were dd'ed
off a disk, and populated and/or updated using the vnd device.

One problem with that procedure is that the miniroots start with
8 Kbytes of useless space, where a disklabel and bootblocks should go.
The right thing to do, IMHO, is one of:

	* use dd to trim the first 16 512-byte blocks off the
	  front of the miniroot, and proceed with the instructions
	  on the Web page.  If we take that path, Arne and I should
	  probably do that to  miniroots before releasing them.

	* Leave the miniroots as they are, and use something like
	   dd skip=16 seek=16 [...]
	  to ignore the first 8k

	* Put a useful disklabel and bootblock into the miniroot,
	  and update the instructions to suggest dd'ing the
	  miniroot onto a raw C partition.

I think I prefer the first option: it *might* then be possible
to put a miniroot into a B (swap) partition and boot it, which would
make it easier to install larger, or custom-sized, root partitions.

The second and third options seem like documenting a bug
and calling it a feature to me. :)

Anyway, feedback from the users would be useful here, especially
users who've installed NetBSD/pmax recently.