NetBSD/vax System Requirements and Supported Devices

Hardware supported by NetBSD/vax 1.4.1 includes (but may not be limited to):

CPU types:

VAX 11/750, VAX 11/78{0,5}, VAX 8200/8250/8300/8350, VAX 8600/8650, MicroVAX II/VAXstation II, MicroVAX III, MicroVAX 3300/3400, MicroVAX 3500/3600, MicroVAX 3800/3900, MicroVAX 2000/VAXstation 2000, VAXstation 3100 model 30,38,40,48,76, VAXserver 3100, VAXstation 3200/3500, and VAXstation 4000/60.

Networking:

DEUNA/DELUA Unibus ethernet, DEQNA/DELQA Q22 bus ethernet, and LANCE chip where available.

Serial lines:

DHU11/DHV11/DL11/DLV11/DZ11/DZQ11/DZV11 Unibus/Q22 bus asynchronous lines and DZ11-compatible lines on VAXstations.

Disks:

UDA50 Unibus MSCP controller, KDA50/RQDX1/2/3 Q22 bus MSCP controller, KDB50 BI-bus MSCP controller, MFM and SCSI controllers on VAXstations (Note: currently no DMA, so very slow), RP04/05/06/07 and RM02/03/05/80 Massbus disks, and Console RL02 on VAX 8600.

Some third-party controllers are also known to work, other do not.

Tapes:

TMSCP on Q22 bus (TK50/70, TU81), TMSCP on BI bus and SCSI tapes on VAXstations.

Floppy:

RX33/RX50 on RQDX controllers. RX50 on VAX 8200.

Note: While NetBSD/vax ships with complete X sets, the X xserver does not currently support any keyboards or mice. The X clients will work fine when set to a remote display.

The minimal configuration requires 2M of RAM and ~40MB of disk space, but the installation really requires 6MB RAM unless you plan on using Jedi powers.

Here is a table of recommended HD partition sizes for a full install:

Getting the NetBSD System on to Useful Media

Installation is supported from several media types, including:

• Floppy
• FTP
• Tape
• NFS

Note

Installing on a "bare" machine requires some bootable device; either a tape or floppy drive or a NFS server together with a machine that can act as a MOP loader, such as another machine running NetBSD. NetBSD/vax can use both BOOTP/DHCP and BOOTPARAMS for netboot installations.

The procedure for transferring the distribution sets onto installation media depends on the type of media. most of it is up to you, depending what you want to install, but preferred are to do the installation over network as soon as the install kernel is booted.

Creating boot tapes

Under Ultrix the tape name is different:
       gunzip boot.fs.gz
       mt -f /dev/rmt0h rewind
       dd if=boot.fs of=/dev/rmt0h
       mt -f /dev/rmt0h rewoffl

Of course, if you have a tape unit other than unit 0 you have to use the corresponding unit number.

If you wish to install the sets from tape then stage you will need to download the *.tgz files from
       .../NetBSD-1.4.1/vax/binary/sets
(if your disk is less than 200MB you will probably want to exclude the X sets) and then before the 'mt ... rewoffl' run
       tar cvf /dev/nrmt0 *.tgz
When you have booted the bootfs and completed the disk partitioning you will be prompted to 'select medium' for install. At this point you will need to press ^Z (Ctrl+Z) to suspend the install tool, then
       cd /mnt
       mt -f /dev/nrmt0 rewind
       mt -f /dev/nrmt0 fsf
       tar xvf /dev/nrmt0
       fg
then select "install from local dir" and give "/mnt". Note: If your disk is small you will need to be careful about filling it up.

If you are using any other OS to create bootable tapes, remember that the blocksize must be 512 for the file to be bootable! Otherwise it just won't work.

Creating boot floppies

All floppies except RX50 use a standardized format for storing data so writing the bootfs to the floppy should be feasible from any PC. From DOS the preferred way to do this would be via RAWRITE.EXE for RX23 and PUTR for RX33.

Booting from NFS server

• The VAX broadcast a wish to load an image.
• A mopd answers and send the boot program to the VAX.
• The boot program does rarp/bootp requests, mounts the root filesystem and loads the kernel.
• The kernel is loaded and starts executing.

If your machine has a disk and network connection, it may be convenient for you to install NetBSD over the network. This involves temporarily booting your machine over NFS, just long enough so you can initialize its disk. This method requires that you have access to an NFS server on your network so you can configure it to support diskless boot for your machine. Configuring the NFS server is normally a task for a system administrator, and is not trivial.

If you are using a NetBSD system as the boot-server, have a look at the diskless(8) manual page for guidelines on how to proceed with this. If the server runs another operating system, consult the documentation that came with it. (I.e. add_client(8) on SunOS.)

There is also very useful documentation at http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/network/netboot/

You also must install a MOP loader. If you are booting from another NetBSD machine, the MOP daemons are included in the distribution, otherwise you may have to install a MOP loader. A loader can be found at ftp.stacken.kth.se:/pub/OS/NetBSD/mopd Fetch the latest and read the installation instructions.

The file that should be loaded is called boot.mop and is located in
       .../NetBSD-1.4.1/vax/installation/netboot/boot.mop

The kernel to load is the same kernel as the bootfs uses and can be found in
       .../NetBSD-1.4.1/vax/installation/netboot/netbsd.ram.gz
From the install program started in the kernel the rest of the system can be installed. There is also a very good (if somewhat out of date) FAQ for netbooting VAXen at http://world.std.com/~bdc/projects/vaxen/VAX-netboot-HOWTO.html that describes netbooting of VAXen from many different OS'es.

Linux Note: On certain versions of linux (notably RedHat 6.0) the NFS server is broken in such a fashion that it will accept NFS3 mount requests but refuse to serve data via NFS3. The best option is probably to install NetBSD on the server, or find a non broken linux distribution (other versions of RedHat should be fine).

Preparing your System for NetBSD Installation

VAX machines usually need little or no preparation before installing NetBSD, other than the usual, well advised precaution of BACKING UP ALL DATA on any attached storage devices.

If you are on a Qbus or Unibus system the disk controller(s) need be at the standard CSR addresses for DUA (772150) or DUB (760334) to be recognized by the kernel and boot programs.

If you are installing on a VAXstation you may require a serial console.

Installing the NetBSD System

Installation of NetBSD/vax is now easier than ever! For the latest news, problem reports, and discussion, join the port-vax mainlist by mailing a line saying        subscribe port-vax
to majordomo@netsbd.org. Also, see http://www.netbsd.org for more information.

If you encounter any problems, please report them via the mailing list or the send-pr(1) program so that they can be fixed for the next release.

To install or upgrade NetBSD, you need to first boot the installation program and then interact with the screen-menu program sysinst. The installation program actually consists of the NetBSD kernel plus an in-memory file system of utility programs.

The usual procedure is to write the installation system to the install media, as described earlier.

Booting from install media

The built-in console monitor understands a bunch of commands, dependent of which VAX you have. To just boot from a device, type 'B' at the '>>>' prompt. Device naming in the console monitor differs a lot from the Unix counterparts. A device looks like "ddcu", where dd is the device type, c is the controller number and u is the device unit. Many console monitors also support the 'SHOW DEV' command, which shows available units to boot from.

A summary of the most common boot devices and their name:
       B DUA0 - first MSCP controller, unit 0.
       B MUA0 - first TMSCP tape controller, unit 0.
       B DKB0 - second SCSI bus, unit 0.
       B XQA0 - first Q22 bus Ethernet controller.
       B ESA0 - first LANCE Ethernet controller on VAXstations.
Other devices may be appropriate for your configuration.

Then just proceed with the program sysinst. The install descriptions for sysinst that follows can be easily adopted to vax.

Running the Sysinst Installation Program

1. Introduction

   Using sysinst, installing NetBSD is a relatively easy process. You still should read this document and have it in hand when doing the installation process. This document tries to be a good guideline for the installation and as such covers many details to be completed. Do not let this discourage you, the install program is not hard to use.
   

2. Possible PCMCIA issues

   There is a serious bug that may make installation of NetBSD on PCMCIA machines difficult. This bug does not make use of PCMCIA difficult once a machine is installed. If you do not have PCMCIA on your machine [PCMCIA] is only really used on laptop machines), you can skip this section, and ignore the ``[PCMCIA]'' notes.

   This will explains how to work around the installation problem.

   What is the bug: The kernel keeps careful track of what interrupts and i/o ports are in use during autoconfiguration. It then allows the PCMCIA devices to pick unused interrupts and ports. Unfortunately, not all devices are included in the INSTALL kernels in order to save space. Let's say your laptop has a soundblaster device built in. The INSTALL kernel has no sound support. The PCMCIA code might allocate your soundblaster's IRQ and I/O ports to PCMCIA devices, causing them not to work. This is especially bad if one of the devices in question is your ethernet card.

   This problem will impact some, but not all, users of PCMCIA. If this bug is affecting you, watch the [PCMCIA] notes that will appear in this document.
   

3. General

   The following is a walk-through of the steps you will take while getting NetBSD installed on your hard disk. sysinst is a menu driven installation system that allows for some freedom in doing the installation. Sometimes, questions will be asked and in many cases the default answer will be displayed in brackets (``[ ]'') after the question. If you wish to stop the installation, you may hit Control-C at any time, but if you do, you'll have to begin the installation process again from scratch.
   

4. Quick install

   First, let's describe a quick install. The other sections of this document go into the installation procedure in more detail, but you may find that you do not need this. If you want detailed instructions, skip to section 3. This section describes a basic installation, using a CD-ROM install as an example.

   
   
   • What you need.

     
     

     - The distribution sets (in this example, they are on CD).
     

     - One 1.44M 3.5" floppy.
     

     - A CD-ROM drive (SCSI or ATAPI), a harddisk and a minimum of of memory installed.
     

     - The harddisk should have at least + n megabytes of space free, where n is the number of megabytes of main memory in your system. If you wish to install the X window system as well, you will need at least 60Mb more.

     
     

   • The Quick Installation

     
     

     - Insert the boot floppy you just created. Boot the computer. The main menu will be displayed.
     

     - If you wish, you can configure some network settings immediately by choosing the utilities menu and then configure network. It isn't actually required at this point, but it may be more convenient. Go back to the main menu.
     

     - Choose install
     

     - You will be guided through some steps regarding the setup of your disk, and the selection of distributed components to install. When in doubt, refer to the rest of this document for details.
     

     - After your disk has been prepared, choose CD-ROM as the medium. The default values for the path and device should be ok.
     

     - After all the files have been unpacked, go back to the main menu and select reboot, after you have removed the bootfloppy from the drive.
     

     - NetBSD will now boot. You should log in as root, and set a password for that account. You are also advised to edit the file /etc/rc.conf to match your system needs.
     

     - Your installation is now complete.
     

     - For configuring the X window system, if installed, see the files in
            /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/doc.
     Further information can be found on http://www.xfree86.org/

   
   

5. Booting NetBSD

   [PCMCIA

   ] Unplug your PCMCIA devices, so that they won't be found by NetBSD.

   Boot your machine using the boot floppy. The boot loader will start, and will print a countdown and begin booting.

   If the boot loader messages do not appear in a reasonable amount of time, you either have a bad boot floppy or a hardware problem. Try writing the install floppy image to a different disk, and using that.

   It will take a while to load the kernel from the floppy, probably around a minute or so, then, the kernel boot messages will be displayed. This may take a little while also, as NetBSD will be probing your system to discover which hardware devices are installed. The most important thing to know is that wd0 is NetBSD's name for your first IDE disk, wd1 the second, etc. sd0 is your first SCSI disk, sd1 the second, etc.

   Note that, once the system has finished booting, you need not leave the floppy in the disk drive.

   Once NetBSD has booted and printed all the boot messages, you will be presented with a welcome message and a main menu. It will also include instructions for using the menus.
   

6. Network configuration

   [PCMCIA

   ] You can skip this section, as you will only get data from floppy in the first part of the install.

   If you will not use network operation during the installation, but you do want your machine to be configured for networking once it is installed, you should first go to the utilities menu, and select Configure network option. If you only want to temporarily use networking during the installation, you can specify these parameters later. If you are not using Domain Name Service (DNS), you can give an empty response in reply to answers relating to this.
   

7. Installation drive selection and parameters

   To start the installation, select the menu option to install NetBSD from the main menu.

   The first thing is to identify the disk on which you want to install NetBSD. sysinst will report a list of disks it finds and ask you for your selection. Depending on how many disks are found, you may get a different message. You should see disk names like wd0, wd1, sd0, or sd1.

   Next, depending on whether you are using a wdx or wdx disk, you will either be asked for the type of disk (wdx) you are using or you will be asked if you want to specify a fake geometry for your SCSI disk (sdx). The types of disk are be IDE, ST-506 or ESDI. If you're installing on an ST-506 or ESDI drive, you'll be asked if your disk supports automatic sector forwarding. If you are sure that it does, reply affirmatively. Otherwise, the install program will automatically reserve space for bad144 tables.
   

8. Partitioning the disk.
   
   
   • Which portion of the disk to use.

     You will be asked if you want to use the entire disk or only part of the disk. If you decide to use the entire disk for NetBSD, it will be checked if there are already other systems present on the disk, and you will be asked to confirm whether you want to overwrite these.

     If you want to use the entire disk for NetBSD, you can skip the following section and go to Editing the NetBSD disklabel.
     

   • Editing the NetBSD disklabel.

     The partition table of the NetBSD part of a disk is called a disklabel. There are 3 layouts for the NetBSD part of the disk that you can pick from: Standard, Standard with X and Custom. The first two use a set of default values (that you can change) suitable for a normal installation, possibly including X. The last option lets you specify everything yourself.

     You will be presented with the current layout of the NetBSD disklabel, and given a chance to change it. For each partition, you can set the type, offset and size, block and fragment size, and the mount point. The type that NetBSD uses for normal file storage is called 4.2BSD. A swap partition has a special type called swap.

     Some partitions in the disklabel have a fixed purpose. Partition a is always the root partition, b is the swap partition, and c is the whole disk. Partitions e-h are available for other use. Traditionally, d is the partition mounted on the /usr directory, but this is historical practice, not a fixed value.

     You will then be asked to name your disk's disklabel. The default response is mydisk. For most purposes this will be OK. If you choose to name it something different, make sure the name is a single word and contains no special characters. You don't need to remember this name.

   
   

9. Preparing your hard disk

   You are now at the point of no return. Nothing has been written to your disk yet, but if you confirm that you want to install NetBSD, your hard drive will be modified. If you are sure you want to proceed, enter yes at the prompt.

   The install program will now label your disk and make the file systems you specified. The filesystems will be initialized to contain NetBSD bootstrapping binaries and configuration files. You will see messages on your screen from the various NetBSD disk preparation tools that are running. There should be no errors in this section of the installation. If there are, restart from the beginning of the installation process. Otherwise, you can continue the installation program after pressing the return key.
   

10. Getting the distribution sets.

    The NetBSD distribution consists of a number of sets, that come in the form of gzipped tarfiles. A few sets must be installed for a working system, others are optional. At this point of the installation, you will be presented with a menu which enables you to choose from one of the following methods of installing the sets. Some of these methods will first load the sets on your hard disk, others will extract the sets directly.

    For all these methods, the first step is making the sets available for extraction, and then do the actual installation. The sets can be made available in a few different ways. The following sections describe each of those methods. After reading the one about the method you will be using, you can continue to section 9
    

11. Installation using ftp

    To be able to install using ftp, you first need to configure your network setup, if you haven't already at the start of the install procedure. sysinst will do this for you, asking you to provide some data, like IP number, hostname, etc. If you do not have name service set up for the machine that you are installing on, you can just press return in answer to these questions, and DNS will not be used.

    You will also be asked to specify the host that you want to transfer the sets from, the directory on that host, and the account name and password used to log into that host using ftp. If you did not set up DNS when answering the questions to configure networking, you will need to specify an IP number instead of a hostname for the ftp server.

    sysinst will proceed to transfer all the default set files from the remote site to your hard disk.
    

12. Installation using NFS

    To be able to install using NFS, you first need to configure your network setup, if you haven't already at the start of the install procedure. sysinst will do this for you, asking you to provide some data, like IP number, hostname, etc. If you do not have name service set up for the machine that you are installing on, you can just press return in answer to these questions, and DNS will not be used.

    You will also be asked to specify the host that you want to transfer the sets from, and the directory on that host that the files are in. This directory should be mountable by the machine you are installing on, i.e. correctly exported to your machine.

    If you did not set up DNS when answering the questions to configure networking, you will need to specify an IP number instead of a hostname for the NFS server.
    

13. Installation from CD-ROM

    When installing from a CD-ROM, you will be asked to specify the device name for your CD-ROM player (usually cd0), and the directory name on the CD-ROM where the distribution files are.

    sysinst will then check if the files are indeed available in the specified location, and proceed to the actual extraction of the sets.
    

14. Installation from an unmounted filesystem

    In order to install from a local filesystem, you will need to specify the device that the filesystem resides on (for example wd1e) the type of the filesystem, and the directory on the specified filesystem where the sets are located. sysinst will then check if it can indeed access the sets at that location.
    

15. Installation from a local directory

    This option assumes that you have already done some preparation yourself. The sets should be located in a directory on a filesystem that is already accessible. sysinst will ask you for the name of this directory.
    

16. Extracting the distribution sets

    After the install sets containing the NetBSD distribution have been made available, you can either extract all the sets (a full installation), or only extract sets that you have selected. In the latter case you will be shown the currently selected sets, and given the opportunity to select the sets you want. Some sets always need to be installed (kern, base and etc) they will not be shown in this selection menu.

    Before extraction begins, you can elect to watch the files being extracted; the name of each file that is extracted will be shown. This can slow down the installation process considerably, especially on machines with slow graphics consoles or serial consoles.

    After all the files have been extracted, all the necessary device node files will be created. If you have already configured networking, you will be asked if you want to use this configuration for normal operation. If so, these values will be installed in the network configuration files.
    

17. Finalizing your installation.

    Congratulations, you have successfully installed NetBSD1.4.1. You can now reboot the machine, and boot from harddisk.