For the sake of constructive discussion.....

It has occurred to me that we now have this new
install ditty (which mostly works in 1.6) except
there is no good way to install from tape.  The
machines, for our discussion VAX and Sparc, can
be easily and finally tape booted well (YEAH!)
and the tape drivers finally work well (YEAH!).
Kudos to the NetBSD crew responsible for this!
But, in the grand and exhalted high tradition of
*NIX, we never have gotten it right as to a tape
install.  Tape boot... yes, tape install... no.

So, for the sake of discussion, what is needed
to add, down in the bowels of sysinstall at the
go-fetchum-fileos-from-somewhere menu, to allow
reading from tapeofileos the necessary bytebits?

Easy bandaid-patch-fix way:

  1.  Add a tape section to the menu that does
      the minimal (base/etc/kerns) install just
      like ftp does.  A mini-install is really
      all that is needed since the rest can be
      added with simple post-install scripts
      after the initial machine load.

  2.  Use the same structure for /usr/INSTALL.
      It is crude and not the one true way, but
      it works for ftp so why not for tape.

  3.  Create a tapefile3 with the appropriate
      bits and write to tape via a script.

The one true *NIX way:

  1.  Add tape section as above for a mini-
      install of base/etc/kerns.

  2.  Create a root dump and a usrland tarball
      and restore/tar the bits into place.  The
      mini-install should be fine here too.
      Alas, dump/restore seems to have a bad
      taste in NetBSD or be politically incorrect
      since time began.

A simple way:

  1.  Add tape section as above for a mini-
      install of base/etc/kerns.

  2.  Roll a base/etc/kernbits tarball and write
      via script as tapefile3.

  3.  Install from tape rather than using the
      ftp /usr/INSTALL approach.  Real tar kind
      of thingy here should work fine.  There is
      no real need to transfer tapebits like ftp
      does... just roll off the tape.

So, that would suggest that some simple mods to
sysinstall could accomplish the install task.
Also, some relatively simple scripts could roll
a tapefile3.  All the rest of base NetBSD bits
could be rolled into a tapefile4 for postinstall
after the mini-install.  Likewise the X bits as
a tapefile5.  I already tested some scripts to
do that last night.  The set of install tapes
for say 60mb 1/4 inch streamers would be 3
(base mini-install on tape 1, reset of NetBSD
on tape 2, and X on tape 3).  It all would just
barely fit on a TK50 for oldeVAXentoys, and it
would all fit with X on a 6150 class tape for
Sparcs.  Sun3 class boxes would still require
the 3 tape 60mb set.

So, for the sake of discussion, can we needle
the programmersourcetreeguruboyz to add some
real tape install bits to NetBSD?  Pleeeeeze?

(:+}}.....

Thanks

Bob Keys