On Fri, Oct 01, 1999 at 09:56:05PM -0400, wb2oyc wrote:

> >rcons - definitely a FAQ but I am not sure it's in the FAQ.
> >
> Not so; tried that...its not there!  neither is wscons...

try sun...

of course that might have changed since last I ran a non-serial-console
decstation.  :)

Re: documentation
> Hmmm, well where is it?  I've read everything there is, which isn't alot
> on the pmax page...but apparently there's more that applies....I'm glad 
> to hear that...

The NetBSD man pages are helpful beyond belief.  (Try 'man boot' and
'man -k <topic>'.)

> I have alot to learn about BSD derived systems thats for sure...but I 
> find it rather a tuff pull compared to what I'm more familiar with..which
> is no surprise...

NetBSD is pretty spartan with its initial environment.  But once you
understand "the BSD way," I think you'll be pleasantly surprised with
its consistency and modularity.

> I was disappointed there was no bash, for example in the pmax
> packages...not that I'd be able to get it installed successfully with
> this other mess goin' on...but

Hmm... there should a binary bash package at the main ftp site.  Suck
down the .tgz, and then 'pkg_install bash-2.03.tgz'.  The other option
is to build it yourself via the magic of pkgsrc.  :)

> got stuck with disklabel.  the no label on the disk, so you can't
> write one to it...never did get it rignt, so I just used sysinst to do
> it...

This got me too the first couple of times I tried to install NetBSD...
the trick is that the kernel will fudge up an "in-core" disklabel that
you need to physically write to the disk as follows:

disklabel rz1 > /tmp/fakelabel
[then edit the disklabel with vi if you wish...]
disklabel -R -r rz1 /tmp/fakelabel

that second disklabel is the one that actually writes the label to the
disk...

-- 
  Aaron J. Grier  | "Not your ordinary poofy goof." | agrier@poofy.goof.com
   "I really admire your perverse mastery of the SPARC branch delay slot,
      Dave.  Or is it your mastery of the perverse branch delay slot?"
	          -- Joe Martin to Dave S. Miller on linux-kernel