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NetBSD Install Guide

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torch Page Icon Posted 2005-10-29 4:31 PM
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Hello Eveyone,

I want to install NetBSD on my Compaq 2010c. Can someone please show me step by step on how to install and what I need... I only have a PCMCIA slot...

Joseph
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sophisticatedleaf Page Icon Posted 2005-11-03 10:42 PM
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Nope.
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carld Page Icon Posted 2005-11-26 3:10 PM
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tenjeangosi - 2005-10-29 4:31 PM

Hello Eveyone,

I want to install NetBSD on my Compaq 2010c. Can someone please show me step by step on how to install and what I need... I only have a PCMCIA slot...

Joseph


I just finished installing NetBSD/hpcmips 2.1 on my NEC Mobile Pro 780. (Yay me! ) I read a lot of the documentation at http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/hpcmips/ ahead of time, and I'm fairly familiar with Linux, so it wasn't too hard once I really got into it, but I did stumble here and there. This isn't really a step-by-step but here's what I did. Also note that this worked for my MP780, you might need to do things differently for your machine.

Also be aware that even starting the install will do the equivalent of a hard reset on your machine (it sure did on mine) which the website makes very clear. So make a fresh backup before doing anything! I'll keep a backup on my 32Meg CF so I can go back to WinCE for a while if I need to.

My MP780 has a CF slot and a PCMCIA slot that I used with a Card Adaptor as a second CF slot, which made things a little easier. I had a spare 32Meg CF card and a brand new 512Meg card for the install. I'm not sure how you'll get that to work since you'll need your install CF card and Network Card in at the same time. I read that there are cards that do both though.

I downloaded and read through the install directions to get some idea of what was ahead.
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-2.1/hpcmips/INSTALL.html

I then downloaded 3 files:

The boot program
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-2.1/hpcmips/installation/pbsdboot.exe

The install kernel
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-2.1/hpcmips/installation/netbsd.gz

and the NetBSD/hpcmips boot kernel
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-2.1/hpcmips/binary/kernel/netbsd-GENERIC.gz

and put them on the 32M card in my PCMIA slot. I unzipped the install kernel (netbsd.gz) to make the install run a bit faster. You can delete it once the install is done.

Next I ran pbsdboot.exe and selected /Storage Card/netbsd as my kernel and MP780 as my device and hit boot. There are some other options there I left alone for now. If you leave the boot kernel (netbsd.gz) zipped you'll have to add .gz to the end of the kernel selection box for the boot loader to see it.

NetBSD booted to the Install screen and I took out the 32M CF card and insterted my Network Card. NetBSD saw it and told me it was ne0. It seems to track card changes really well.

The menus you get should be pretty self-explanatory if you're familiar with Linux or any other Unix. The one problem I ran into was in configuring my network. The default network configuration selection is somthing like [autoselect] which didn't work. After going around and around I saw it said something about manual at the top of the screen. So I typed in "manual" and it configured the network through DHCP .

Once that was done I partitioned and formatted my 512M CF with a 10M Windows partition (It can probably be a lot smaller -- like 3 Megs) and the rest for NetBSD set to "/" with no swap partition (I wanted to cut down on the read/writes to the CF card). I did a complete install via FTP which seemed the only practical way to install to me. You can choose not to install some packages like Xwindows or games if you need to save space.

I accepted all the defaults for servers and user and so on and the installer downloaded and installed the whole system.

When the install was completely finished I rebooted back to WinCE (hold down the shift key when rebooting and you'll skip all the configuration stuff that comes up). I copied pbsdboot and netbsd-GENERIC.gz over to the Windows partition on the 512 card (Windows thought it still had all the card to work with which kind of bothered me but it didn't seem to be a problem), and reran pbsdboot.exe and selected netbsd-GENERIC.gz (leave this one zipped, and again for some odd reason you'll have to go in and add the .gz on the end of the kernel selection box). This booted me into my installed NetBSD!

The Xwindowing system is pretty ugly at the moment (I like my KDE), but the system seems functional and pretty responsive. There's a lot I don't remember how to do from the straight command line at the moment. But it's up and running.

I know I glossed over a lot of things but those are the main points. And once I got the networking going it was really pretty simple and automatic. Let me know if I can help with anthing. I'm off to find my "Unix Command Line for Big Dummies" book.

Good Luck

Carl

Edited by carld 2005-11-26 3:19 PM
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torch Page Icon Posted 2005-11-26 3:17 PM
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Glad to see you got NetBSD running . However, what does this have to do with getting NetBSD on my COmpaq 2010c...
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carld Page Icon Posted 2005-11-26 3:25 PM
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Well since your Compaq is a Mips machine just like my NEC you'll need to run the same NetBSD/hpcmips that I'm running. And you'll have to run the same boot loader and the same kernels (probably) and all that, so really they should be fairly similar except for whatever hardware differences there are. Unless of course I'm completely missundertand what it is you were asking about
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torch Page Icon Posted 2005-11-26 3:36 PM
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Oh, okay. Thank You very much .
ActiveSync is not working, so I cannot as yet try.
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sophisticatedleaf Page Icon Posted 2005-11-26 3:48 PM
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It is common knowledge that netbsd/mips works on the 780. But isn't the 2010c CE 2.0?

That would prevent the bootloader from working because of problems other than the processor itself.

Mips devices are well supported under NetBSD and Linux.
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cmonex Page Icon Posted 2005-11-26 5:37 PM
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ProgramSynthesiser - 2005-11-26 9:48 PM

It is common knowledge that netbsd/mips works on the 780. But isn't the 2010c CE 2.0?

That would prevent the bootloader from working because of problems other than the processor itself.

Mips devices are well supported under NetBSD and Linux.


maybe a simple OS hexedit will take care of it
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torch Page Icon Posted 2005-11-26 5:49 PM
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Okay cmonex, I am listening
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cmonex Page Icon Posted 2005-11-26 7:35 PM
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not sure at all, this was just an idea... when you start the bootloader program on CE, what kind of error does it give?
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torch Page Icon Posted 2005-11-27 12:12 AM
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Me? I do not remember... The bootloader had a profile for Compaq 2010c and I tried and it gave me an error message. Maybe because I was attempting to install it to RAM. (No memory cards as yet for me )
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cmonex Page Icon Posted 2005-11-27 1:07 AM
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oh if it supports the 2010c that means good...
next time if you get the error message, don't forget it!
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torch Page Icon Posted 2005-11-27 6:03 PM
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Okay, cmonex...
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sophisticatedleaf Page Icon Posted 2005-11-27 6:33 PM
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Do I need to repeat this on another thread?

CE 2 does not have all of the functions (or something like that) that CE 2.1 and 3 have. Because of that, the bootloader would have to be completely rewritten to work. As I have said before: It is possible, but someone has to do it.
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torch Page Icon Posted 2005-11-27 6:39 PM
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Okay, no problem. CE 2 is fine enough for me and I am not going to ask anyone to port it for me. I apologize for irritating you .
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