Somebody wrote:

> My main problem with the online docs was the sheer
> unnavigability of them.

I'm loathe to criticize volunteer efforts, but I have to echo this.
It took a good bit of mousing around, for example, to find the
instructions for installing NetBSD from the 1.3.2 CD-ROM.  Eventually,
I got to a page which offered a "NetBSD/pmax Directory".  There were
three likely-looking links there:

"Installing NetBSD/pmax"
"NetBSD 1.3.2 on CDROM"
"NetBSD 1.3.2/pmax Install Notes"

The third one turned out to be right, but I had to read over halfway
through a long document before I knew I'd found the right place.

Please take this as a suggestion for improvement and not as criticism.
I'm grateful to all you guys and in awe of the magnitude of effort you
folks put in.

Now, as to the Install Notes themselves:

"Install via the NetBSD CDROM." gives instructions for mounting the
CD on an Ultrix system, but then doesn't warn you that the NetBSD-1.3.2
directory is invisible to Ultrix.  All you get is a "netbsd-1.2" direc-
tory.  Now netbsd-1.2/pmax/installa/diskimage/diskimag.gz appears to be
the same thing as NetBSD-1.3.2/pmax/installation/diskimage/diskimage.gz;
the documentation should mention that.

Similarly, netbsd-1.2/pmax/binary/sets/*.tgz appears to match the corres-
ponding NetBSD-1.3.2/pmax/binary/sets/*.tgz files.

Under "Installing from Ultrix", there should be a reference to where to
find the exact instructions on "the technique of dd'ing a disk image into
swap", or better, those instructions should be repeated here.

Under "Install via diskimage.", you might warn users about the warning
messages that come out of the disklabel command when you label a blank
disk, especially the one about "using Ultrix partition information".

Also under "Install via diskimage.", there is an extraneous "2" in the
device name in the first "gunzip" command line.

Under "Once you've booted the diskimage", the mount command given,
"mount /dev/rzXY", does not work to mount the root filesystem writeable.
I apologize for not recording the exact error message, but it was some-
thing to the effect that /dev/rzXY was an unknown or invalid device.
"mount -t ffs /dev/rzXY /" worked, though.

sysinst:  this is such a terrific piece of software that I hate to say
anything bad about it at all.  Reluctantly, however ...

disk partitioning in megabyte units can complain that partitions overlap
even if you've carefully configured them not to.

the partitioning menu is really annoying:  "a" means "change partition
a", "b" means "change partition b", but "c" meands "change partition d"
and you've got an off-by-one error the rest of the way down.  I under-
stand that sysinst doesn't want to allow you to change the c partition,
but it'd be less frustrating if the option menu letters matched the par-
tition letters all the way through.

sysinst will *not* install from CD-ROM.  It doesn't seem to understand
that rzXc is a valid CD device.  Various attempts to trick it didn't
work, either; I wound up installing via FTP.  It would be nice if
sysinst accepted a blank device name to mean "I already mounted the
CD for you - do not diddle with it; just *believe* the directory name
I gave you".

It'd be nice, too, if the fact that sysinst tries to mount the CD on
/mnt2 was documented ...

This is getting to be really nice!  By far the easiest NetBSD intallation
yet!

Terry R. Friedrichsen

terry@venus.sunquest.com