My thanks to Theo for putting up with all that blather and his thoughtful
response ...

>>Other than that, initial installation went without a hitch; so we might wanna
>>consider a README that mentions this alternate/"traditional" method of doing a
>>fresh install without having to "prime the pump" on an sd1 inside an existing
>>system.
>
>I could only describe what I had done (be glad Paul didn't describe what he
>did: he never even had a disk!)  If someone sends me a document (in roughly the
>same format as the README, please) describing what different method they used,
>I'll merge them.

OK, you got a deal.  It was pretty simple, really.  Same as a SunOS install up
to the point of having miniroot booted; instead of typing "suninstall", one
just mounts the / and /usr partitions successively onto the miniroot's "/a" and
un-tars everything ...  (I guess I should have mentioned that I gunzip'd the
files on my other machine first, and then wrote the files to 1/4" tape as NN
consecutive tar files.  So it just became a matter of "tar -xvpf /dev/nrst8"
from there)

>>(1) "nvi" was hanging if I enabled "showmatch" and hit, e.g., a closing paren
>>    [")"]
>
>"nvi" bugs should be sent to cgd.  This bug may already have been fixed,
>though.  Please report bugs as soon as you run into them, without delay.

OK, just thought I'd hold off until I get a March 27th kernel & userland made.

>The binary snapshots were simply copies of Paul's and my machines.  We didn't
>have enough diskspace at the time, nor was the distribution creation stuff
>solid.  The next snapshots should hopefully be a lot cleaner.  (I might even
>rob a 2nd SPARCstation to install it on ... if I can find a disk.)

Well, I've got a 1 Gb disk:

netbsd4me:58 # df -k
Filesystem              1K-blocks    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/sd0a                   10807    7436    2290    76%    /
/dev/sd0g                  133303   57027   62945    48%    /usr
/dev/sd1c                  947377  110985  741654    13%    /usr/src

... and it's pretty empty :-)

>>I think a general comment at this point is in order.  I think it's taken as a
>>given (if not for granted) that most of the folks on port-sparc are already
>>NetBSD mavens from the x86 version.
>
>Anyone who intends to follow *any* NetBSD port should also place themselves on
>the current-users mailing list;

Agreed.  I've been on for a while, lurking ...

>>More importantly, how do I know whether the procedure is proper for the SPARC
>>port?
>
>The NetBSD tree compiles in the same way on all architectures.  Or, well, it
>should.  Often a change made for one architecture breaks another ...  but
>repairs are soon made.  The updating procedure you listed should do just fine.

OK, although I just noticed two things:

(1) There's no /usr/share/mk, so the initial

 cd /usr/src/usr.bin/make; make && make install

    falls flat on its face.

(2) Chris just posted saying that changes were afoot in the include files, so
    I now wonder if the order Mike Long's 2/25 posting had:

1) cd /usr/src/usr.bin/make; make && make install
2) cd /usr/src/usr.bin/tsort; make && make install
3) cd /usr/src/gnu/usr.bin/gas; make && make install
4) cd /usr/src/share/mk; make install
5) cd /usr/src/include; make && make install

shouldn't instead be

4) cd /usr/src/share/mk; make install
5) cd /usr/src/include; make && make install
1) cd /usr/src/usr.bin/make; make && make install
2) cd /usr/src/usr.bin/tsort; make && make install
3) cd /usr/src/gnu/usr.bin/gas; make && make install

???

>>I don't recall what the state of shared libraries
>>is on NetBSD/SPARC at the moment (Paul?) - should one still setenv "NOPIC"
>>before building in .../libc, for example?
>
>Shared libraries work.

OK ... so do I/we remove the "setenv NOPIC" there?

>>[...] working kernel and userland built and installed, the next step would
>>be to get "sup" up and running, and get a proper supfile created & installed.
>>Is this documented somewhere, in reasonable detail?
>
>The file you wish to read is "pub/NetBSD-current/doc/README.sup".

Got it.  Is it likely that everyone running NetBSD/SPARC should have the same
"sup" supfile?  If so, can we (you) provide a template version?  Or will
everyone have different ones ...

>>In Theo's instructions, I see a
>>reference to a "/usr/obj", but since the binaries don't leave one with such a
>>thing, I have no idea what it's for.
>
>BSDs >= 4.3Reno have a feature built into the `make' program.  If it finds a
>directory (or symbolic link) called `obj' it will use it for all the object
>files.  This can be used for a number of neat things; one of which is that I
>use the same source tree for compiling both the i386 & SPARC trees (both of
>which are compiling simultaneously now).  I highly recommend others do this,
>thus:
>
>	"mkdir /usr/obj; cd /usr/src; make obj".
>
>I use a further set of tricks:
>
>	"sparc# mkdir /usr/src/obj-sparc; cd /usr; ln -s /usr/obj-sparc obj"
>	"i386#  mkdir /usr/src/obj-i386;  cd /usr; ln -s /usr/obj-i386 obj"

OK, I understand this last one - it keeps my objects in the big fat disk for
one thing (-: - but I'm not sure about the "mkdir /usr/obj ; cd /usr/src ;
make obj" part.  Are you saying that's what one should use as the replacement
last step in the build, i.e. replace

 cd /usr/src; make && make install

with

 cd /usr/src; make obj && make install

???

And/or does this also apply to *any* (plain) "make" done in the build process
(e.g., "cd /usr/src/lib/libc; make && make install" becomes "[...] make obj &&")

(Sorry if this is overly obvious or a stupid question on my part; I like to be
 overly cautious and 100% sure of things in some cases, rather than simply
 assume I know what it means and finding myself wrong later on ... :-( )

>I _strongly_ suggest you peruse the current-users mailing list archives, found
>in "pub/NetBSD/mailing-lists/".

Yah, when I grabbed the latest tar files I grabbed all the mailing list
archives for anything I could find :-)

One last question (I know this uses up my question quota for March (-: ); is
there any new status on SCSI stuff, like tape or CD-ROM driver support?
(I'm trying to use the spare IPC as a NetBSD staging ground before converting
 ol' "isolar" here, but I can't completely switch over until my SunCD and
 Exabyte work ... )

Thanks Theo!

(If it isn't obvious, I think Theo, Paul, Chris Torek and Chris Demetriou
 deserve some kind of Congressional Medal or something for all this effort ...)

	- Greg

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