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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!wupost!cs.utexas.edu!natinst.com!hrd769.brooks.af.mil!not-for-mail From: burgess@hrd769.brooks.af.mil (Dave Burgess) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Re: 386bsd to NetBSD: How easy, Good Idea? Date: 17 May 1993 09:03:35 -0500 Organization: Armstrong Lab MIS, Brooks AFB TX Lines: 71 Message-ID: <1t8605INN14f@hrd769.brooks.af.mil> References: <haley.737634899@husc.harvard.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: hrd769.brooks.af.mil Keywords: Switching 386bsd NetBSD In article <haley.737634899@husc.harvard.edu> haley@scws5.harvard.edu (Elizabeth Haley) writes: >I am currently running a short stack of 386bsd, that is, just >the srcdist and bindist, no etcdist... > In my experience, the etcdist is generally a waste of disk space. Most of the usable utilities have had new versions released. Lots of the rest is special purpose software that has an audience, even though I don't know who they are. >I am considering switching to NetBSD, but I have seen no patch-kit or >diffs. The prospect of a total reinstallation makes my fingers hurt... > As far as I know (not a great distance), there is not now, nor is there planned to be, a patchkit bridge between the two. >If I elect to stick with 386bsd I still need to do this with 20 disks >or so, and then some sort of patchkit, but I think I like that better >than maybe 35-40 disks and no patch-kit... > NetBSD installs on a few more disks than 386bsd, but not that many. You are going to have to do some type of updates, if only to install a new version when either 1.5 or 2.0 are released. NetBSD is as close to a 1.5 release as we have today (maybe not tomorrow, but today) and therefore relieves the pressure to install and immediately patch. >I just don't know... Is there a patch-kit between 386bsd and NetBSD, >or just a Kit to go from 386bsd + pk0.2.[23] to NetBSD? > >Or anything... > I took a running 386bsd system and installed the NetBSD software over my existing system. It got kind of squirrelly around the part where the /bin utilities were getting installed, but everything seemed to have worked out OK in the end. I didn't even bother with the install disk. I just copied everything over to the system and recompiled the kernel. It was a more or less straight-forward operation. A note of advice to the world in general if you are going to attempt this with a working 386bsd system: SAVE YOUR /etc DIRECTORY!!! The most time consuming part of installing NetBSD this way was going back through the etc directory and fixing all of the 'system dependent' files that I had already. The master.passwd file was by far the most devastating. I was lucky enough to have a backup on tape, but I really pity anyone that tries this without having their passwd (and other) files on a backup somewhere. >(This is all severely shadowed by the vaguely impending GNU hurd, that >I am pretty interested in...) > Just what we need, another entrant in the 'my OS is better than you OS' contest. Terrific :-( >hmmm... -- ------ TSgt Dave Burgess NCOIC AL/Management Information Systems Office Brooks AFB, TX