I have been experimenting a bit with automated testing of the
NetBSD/i386 installation procedure and written some Python code to
assist with this.  I call it "anita", short for "Automated NetBSD
Installation and Test Application".

Using anita, you can download a NetBSD/i386 distribution and install
it in a qemu virtual machine in a fully automated fashion, scripting
the sysinst install procedure using pexpect over a virtual serial
console.  It's fun to watch, and it has already played a part in
finding several bugs in NetBSD.

Anita is still a work in progress.  Currently, only NetBSD/i386 is
supported as the system to install, but it should be possible to add
support for installing other ports, as well as cross-installation
setups where the machine running anita is a different architecture
from the virtual machine being installed on.  There is no
documentation yet other than this e-mail.

If you want to play with it, here is what you need:

 - The anita tarball from
   <http://www.gson.org/netbsd/anita/anita-1.0.tar.gz>

 - NetBSD-current from August 7, 2006 or newer (otherwise you will run
   into a kernel bug which causes some of the serial console output to
   be dropped on its way from qemu to pexpect; see kern/34129).  Note
   that this requirement concerns the host system (the one you run
   anita on), not the target system (the one being installed in the
   virtual machine)

 - pkgsrc/emulators/qemu.  Unfortunately, qemu doesn't build
   out of the box on -current, creating a bit of a catch-22
   with respect to the previous requirement.  See
   <http://mail-index.netbsd.org/pkgsrc-users/2006/08/12/0001.html>,
   <http://mail-index.netbsd.org/tech-pkg/2006/08/12/0011.html>,
   and the followup discussion to the latter.  Someone please
   fix this...

 - pkgsrc/devel/py-pexpect

 - A network connection for downloading installation file sets

 - About a gigabyte of free disk space

You should now be able to download and install a NetBSD daily build in
a virtual machine like this:

   $ python
   >>> import anita
   >>> ver = anita.DailyBuild("4", "200608280000Z")
   >>> ver.install()

Anita will cache the distribution sets, boot floppies, and a hard disk
image in a directory "netbsd-4" under the current working directory,
effectively turning the install() method a no-op if it is invoked
again without first removing the cached files.  If you remove just
the hard disk image (wd0.img), install() will recreate it from the
cached distribution files.

To boot the newly installed hard disk image and get a login prompt,
type

   >>> ver.interact()

To kill the virtual machine and return to Python, type control-a x.

Because anita runs qemu with the "-snapshot" flag, any changes to the
disk contents will not be saved to the disk image file by default.

To install an official NetBSD release, you can do:

   >>> ver = anita.Release("3.0.1")
   >>> ver.install()

I have tested anita with the 2.1 and 3.0.1 releases and a couple of
daily builds.  With the 2.1 and 3.0.1 releases, the installation part
works, but for some unknown reason, booting the resulting hard disk
image doesn't work (it hangs after the "root on ffs" message).
Perhaps someone can clue me in as to why this happens.  Newer versions
boot just fine.
-- 
Andreas Gustafsson, gson@gson.org