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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msuinfo!uwm.edu!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!milo.mcs.anl.gov!xray!winans From: winans@xray.aps.anl.gov (John R. Winans) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: Novice questions? Where is the BSD kenel Date: 25 Nov 1994 16:17:51 GMT Organization: Argonne National Laboratory, Chicago Illinois Lines: 60 Message-ID: <3b52nf$14m@milo.mcs.anl.gov> References: <3aioah$gbd@crl.crl.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: xray.aps.anl.gov In article <3aioah$gbd@crl.crl.com> petelam@crl.com (Peter Lam) writes: > I am new to BSD, but I am trying to get a hold of it. I heard >that I can get FreeBSD from some of the ftp site, such as freefall.cdrom.com. >However, when I got into the site, I found that there are some directories >that contain the package, but I did not find any sight of the kernel to start >with. Anyone can give me a clue will be appreciated! Peter, I am sure this is a FAQ. But last time I saw the FAQ it was not clear on this point to someone that is really new to this stuff. At the moment, all the PD BSDs that are floating around are set up in a similar way. There are some flopy disk images that you use a utility names 'rawrite' on a DOS box to get onto a floppy. [Or if you already have Unix running somewhere with a floppy disk on the machine... you can just 'dd' them onto the floppy.] You then boot one of the floppies, answer a couple of questions and it will then do the required hard drive formating and so on. At the ftp sites, you will find a tree of stuff that is topped with a release name. [Generally, you want to grab the release with the highest number.] If you 'cd' down a release tree, you should see a README and/or an INSTALL file that will outline the details of what to do and when. There should also be directories named 'floppies' and 'utils'. The 'floppies' directory contains the images of the boot floppies and the 'utils' dorectory contains the rawrite utility. The README, INSTALL, rawrite, and floppies stuff is what you need to *start* with. I use NetBSD from ftp.iastate.edu:/pub/netbsd/NetBSD-1.0/i386. If you are a gizmo-phreak you might want to try FreeBSD... it seems to cater to the device du-jour user. Where NetBSD seems to have diverted that driver-writing energy to doing kernel ports to different machine types (something of greater interest to *me* than using as many sound boards as I can at the same time.) An 'ls' of ftp.iastate.edu:/pub/netbsd/NetBSD-1.0/i386: drwxr-xr-x 6 root 2048 Oct 19 17:11 . drwxr-xr-x 9 root 2048 Nov 16 03:46 .. -r--r--r-- 1 root 65791 Oct 30 23:05 INSTALL <- tells you EVERYTHING drwxr-xr-x 9 root 2048 Oct 16 20:23 binary <- the whole thing drwxr-xr-x 2 root 2048 Oct 23 23:18 floppies <- boot floppies drwxr-xr-x 2 root 2048 Oct 16 20:32 security <- Use in the U.S. only drwxr-xr-x 2 root 2048 Oct 19 16:44 utils <- rawrite is in here the easiest way to get all this stuff is to log in and 'cd' to /pub/netbsd/NetBSD-1.0 and then do a 'get i386.tar' that will return everything you need (if you do, it will take up 22978560 bytes.) When you are done with all that stuff, you will probably want to grab all the source and patches as well. That is in /pub/netbsd/NetBSD-1.0/source and in /pub/netbsd/NetBSD-1.0/patches. The source.tar file is 22179840 bytes. Good luck. --John -- ! John Winans Advanced Photon Source (Controls) ! ! winans@aps.anl.gov Argonne National Laboratory, Illinois ! ! ! !"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away." - Tom Waits !