This chapter will guide you through the installation process. The concepts presented here apply to all installation methods. The only difference is in the way the distribution sets are fetched by the installer. Some details of the installation differ depending on the NetBSD release. The examples from this chapter were created with NetBSD 8.0.

The installation process is divided logically into two parts. In the first part, you create a partition for NetBSD and write the disklabel for that partition. In the second part, you decide which distribution sets (subsets of the operating system) you want to install and then extract the files into the newly created partition(s).

The NetBSD install program sysinst allows you to change the keyboard layout during the installation. If for some reason this does not work for you, you can use the map in the following table.

To start the installation of NetBSD, insert your chosen boot medium (CD/DVD, USB drive, floppy, etc.) and reboot the computer. The kernel on the installation medium will be booted and it will start displaying a lot of messages on the screen about hardware being detected.

When the kernel has booted, you will find yourself in the NetBSD installation program, sysinst, shown in Figure 3.1, “Selecting the language”. From here on, you should follow the instructions displayed on the screen, using the INSTALL document as a companion reference. You will find the INSTALL document in various formats in the root directory of the NetBSD release. The sysinst screens all have more or less the same layout: the upper part of the screen shows a short description of the current operation or a short help message, and the rest of the screen is made up of interactive menus and prompts. To make a choice, use the cursor keys, the “Ctrl+N” (next) and “Ctrl+P” (previous) keys, or press one of the letters displayed left of each choice. Confirm your choice by pressing the Return (also known as “Enter”) key.

Start by selecting the language you prefer to use for the installation process.

The next screen Figure 3.2, “Selecting a keyboard type” will allow you to select a suitable keyboard type.

This will bring you to the main menu of the installation program (Figure 3.3, “The sysinst main menu”).

Choosing the “Install NetBSD to hard disk” option brings you to the next screen (Figure 3.4, “Confirming to install NetBSD”), where you need to confirm that you want to continue the installation.

After choosing “Yes” to continue, sysinst displays a list of one or more disks and asks which one you want to install NetBSD on. In the example of Figure 3.5, “Choosing a hard disk”, two disks are listed, and NetBSD will be installed on “wd0”, the first SATA or IDE disk found. If you use SCSI or external USB disks, the first one will be named “sd0”, the second one “sd1” and so on.

Then the installer will ask you to confirm the detected disk geometry from the information provided by the BIOS, as shown in Figure 3.6, “Disk geometry”. It almost always gives the right values. Choose “This is the correct geometry”, unless you know that the information provided by your BIOS is reportedly incorrect.

The first important step of the installation has come: the partitioning of the hard disk. First, you need to specify whether NetBSD will use a partition (suggested choice) or the whole disk. In the former case it is still possible to create a partition that uses the whole hard disk (Figure 3.7, “Choosing the partitioning scheme”), so we recommend that you select this option as it keeps the BIOS partition table in a format which is compatible with other operating systems.

The next screen shows the current state of the MBR partition table on the hard disk before the installation of NetBSD. There are four primary partitions, and as you can see, this example disk is currently empty. If you do have other partitions you can leave them around and install NetBSD on a partition that is currently unused, or you can overwrite a partition to use it for NetBSD.

Deleting a partition is simple: after selecting the partition, a menu with options for that partition will appear (Figure 3.9, “Partition options”). Change the partition kind to “Delete partition” to remove the partition. Of course, if you want to use the partition for NetBSD you can set the partition kind to “NetBSD”.

You can create a partition for NetBSD by selecting the partition you want to install NetBSD to. The partition names “a” to “d” correspond to the four primary partitions on other operating systems. After selecting a partition, a menu with options for that partition will appear, as shown in Figure 3.9, “Partition options”.

To create a new partition, the following information must be supplied:

Choose the partition type “NetBSD” for the new partition (using the “type” option). The installation program will try to guess the “start” position based on the end of the preceding partition. Change this value if necessary. The same thing applies to the “size” option; the installation program will try to fill in the space that is available until the next partition or the end of the disk (depending on which comes first). You can change this value if it is incorrect, or if you do not want NetBSD to use all the suggested amount of space.

After you have chosen the partition type, start position, and size, it is a good idea to set the name that should be used in the boot menu. You can do this by selecting the “bootmenu” option and providing a label, e.g., “NetBSD”. Repeat this step for other bootable partitions, so you can boot both NetBSD and a Windows system (or other operating systems) using the NetBSD bootselector. You can also choose one of the labelled partitions as default for the boot menu. If you are satisfied with the partition options, confirm your choice by selecting “Partition OK”. Choose “Partition table OK” to leave the MBR partition table editor.

If you have made an error in partitioning (for example you have created overlapping partitions) sysinst will display a message and suggest to go back to the MBR partition editor (but you are also allowed to continue). If the data is correct but the NetBSD partition lies outside the range of sectors which is bootable by the BIOS, sysinst will warn you and ask if you want to proceed anyway. Doing so may lead to problems on older PCs.

Next, sysinst will offer to install a boot selector on the hard disk. This screen is shown in Figure 3.10, “Installing the boot selector”.

At this point, the BIOS partitions (called slices on BSD systems) have been created. They are also called PC BIOS partitions, MBR partitions or fdisk partitions.

Some platforms, like PC systems (amd64 and i386), use DOS-style MBR partitions to separate file systems. The MBR partition you created earlier in the installation process is necessary to make sure that other operating systems do not overwrite the diskspace that you allocated to NetBSD.

NetBSD uses its own partition scheme, called a disklabel, which is stored at the start of the MBR partition: for more information, refer to Section 2.2.2, “Partitions”. In the next few steps you will create a disklabel(5) and set the sizes of the NetBSD partitions, or use existing partition sizes, as shown in Figure 3.11, “Edit partitions?”.

When you choose to set the sizes of the NetBSD partitions you can define the partitions you would like to create. The installation program will generate a disklabel based on these settings. This installation screen is shown in Figure 3.12, “Setting partition sizes”.

As specified in Figure 3.3, “The sysinst main menu”, the items of the installation menus can be selected pressing the letter displayed left of them. Be careful that, in these menus, they do not always correspond to the BSD disklabel partition letters. For example, third line (letter “c”) of Figure 3.12, “Setting partition sizes” does not refer to the whole NetBSD partition, as well as the fourth line (letter “d”) does not correspond to BSD disklabel partition “d”.

The default partition scheme of just using a big / (root) file system (plus swap) works fine with NetBSD, and there is little need to change this. Figure 3.12, “Setting partition sizes” shows how to change the size of the swap partition to 4096 MB. Note also that partition / is marked with a “+”, so it will occupy all the remaining free space (not located for any other partition). Changing /tmp to reside on a RAM disk (mount_tmpfs(8) or mfs(8)) for extra speed may be a good idea. Other partition schemes may use separate partitions for /var, /usr and/or /home, but you should use your own experience to decide if you need this. When you completed the definition of all the desired partitions, choose “Accept partition sizes”.

The next step is to create the disklabel and edit its partitions, if necessary, using the disklabel editor (Figure 3.13, “The disklabel editor”). If you predefined the partition sizes in the previous step, the resulting disklabel will probably fit your wishes. In that case you can complete the process immediately by selecting “Partition sizes ok”.

Letters in Figure 3.13, “The disklabel editor” are used for line selection and to represent the corresponding BSD disklabel partitions, with the meaning specified in Section 2.2.2, “Partitions”. In the amd64 port, there are two reserved partitions: “c”, representing the NetBSD partition, and “d”, representing the whole disk. You can edit all the other partitions by using the cursor keys and pressing the Return key, or using their corresponding letters. You can add a partition by selecting an unused slot and setting parameters for that partition. The partition editing screen is shown in Figure 3.14, “Disklabel partition editing”. When you are satisfied with all the values, choose “Partition sizes ok”.

After defining the partitions in the new disklabel, the last item is to enter a name for the NetBSD disk as shown in Figure 3.15, “Naming the NetBSD disk”. This can be used later to distinguish between disklabels of otherwise identical disks.

The installer now has all the data it needs to prepare the disk. Nothing has been written to the disk at this point but, and now is your last chance to abort the installation process before actually writing data to the disk. Choose “no” to abort the installation process and return to the main menu, or continue by selecting “yes”.

After confirming that sysinst should prepare the disk, it will run disklabel(8) to create the NetBSD partition layout and newfs(8) to create the file systems on the disk.

After preparing the NetBSD partitions and their filesystems, the next question (shown in Figure 3.17, “Selecting bootblocks”) is which bootblocks to install. Usually you will choose the default of BIOS console, i.e., show boot messages on your computer's display.

If you run a farm of machines without monitor, it may be more convenient to use a serial console running on one of the serial ports. The menu also allows changing the serial port's baud rate from the default of 9600 baud, 8 data bits, no parity and one stopbit.

The installer will then ask whether you want to do a full, minimal or custom installation. NetBSD is broken into a collection of distributions sets. “Full installation” is the default and will install all sets; “Minimal installation” will only install a small core set, the minimum of what is needed for a working system. If you select “Custom installation” you can select which sets you would like to have installed. This step is shown in Figure 3.18, “Full or custom installation”.

If you choose to do a custom installation, sysinst will allow you to choose which distribution sets to install, as shown in Figure 3.19, “Selecting distribution sets”. At a minimum, you must select a kernel and the “Base” and “Configuration files (/etc)” sets.

At this point, you have finished the first and most difficult part of the installation!

The second half of the installation process consists in populating the file systems by extracting the distribution sets that you selected earlier (“Base”, “Compiler tools”, “Games”, etc.). Now sysinst needs to find the NetBSD sets and you must tell it where to find them: it can be the same medium where sysinst resides, or a different one, according to your preferences. The menu offers several choices, as shown in Figure 3.20, “Installation media”. The options are explained in detail in the INSTALL documents.

After the method to obtain the distribution sets has been chosen, and (if applicable) after those sets have been transferred, they will be extracted into the new NetBSD file system.

A message (see Figure 3.30, “Extraction of sets completed”) will let you know that the set extraction is now completed and that you have the opportunity to perform some essential configuration before finishing the NetBSD installation.

A menu with all the available configuration options is shown like in Figure 3.31, “Configuration menu”. After the configuration of each item, you will get back to this menu, having the chance to select another one.

If you have not yet configured Network, you can do it now, following the same procedure already presented in Section 3.11.3, “Installing via FTP and Network configuration”.

The timezone can also be configured. It is Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) by default. Use the two-level menu of Continents/Countries and cities shown in Figure 3.32, “Selecting the system's time zone” to select your local timezone with the Return key. After a valid selection, the cursor will automatically be moved to an “Exit” item. Then, simply press Return to exit the timezone selection.

The next item in Figure 3.31, “Configuration menu” allows you to choose which command-line interpreter - also known as “shell” - will be used for the root account. The default is the Bourne-compatible Almquist shell, sh(1). Other choices are the Korn shell (ksh(1)) and the C shell (csh(1)). If, upon reading this, you don't have some idea on which shell you prefer, simply use the default, as this is a highly subjective decision. Should you later change your mind, root's shell can always be changed.

The root account still does not have a password. It is recommended to set it at this point for security reasons, choosing the related item in Figure 3.31, “Configuration menu”.

When you agree to set a root password, sysinst will run the passwd(1) utility for you. Please note that the password is not echoed.

To ease the future installation of binary packages, it is possible to make a preliminary configuration of pkgin: choose “Enable installation of binary packages” in Figure 3.31, “Configuration menu”. pkgin will be fetched and installed from an FTP server, so be sure that the network configuration has already been done. Specify the “Host” name, its “Base directory” (where the packages for all the NetBSD ports are stored), and the “Package directory”, related to your port and your NetBSD version. Usually, the defaults are correct.

Choosing “ftp” as “User”, no password will be required. As shown in Figure 3.36, “Enabling installation of binary packages”, you can also choose to install one or more additional packages, typing their names using a space as separator, pressing “Enter” at the end. To proceed to the installation, type “x” and press “Enter”. A “pkgin update” will be run after the installation of pkgin, to let the repository be immediately up to date.

After the procedure is completed, sysinst will show the command to install further packages. Hit “Enter” to go back to the configuration menu.

If you need or want to build packages from their source code via pkgsrc, choose “Fetch and unpack pkgsrc for building from source” in Figure 3.31, “Configuration menu”. As before, specify the “Host” name; “pkgsrc directory” is the sources base directory. Defaults are usually the best values. A single archive file will be downloaded, for example pkgsrc.tgz: if you want to automatically remove it after the pkgsrc installation, move the cursor on “Delete after install” and press “Enter”. To proceed with the download, type “x” and then press “Enter”.

In the initial configuration menu (Figure 3.31, “Configuration menu”), it is also possible to enable some useful services such as the daemon listening for ssh. For information about ntpd and ntpdate, refer to Section 29.2, “The Network Time Protocol (NTP)”. xdm handles the authentication and the session of users through an X display. Usage of the Cryptographic Device Driver (cgd) is shown in Chapter 14, The cryptographic device driver (CGD). Logical Volume Manager (lvm) is documented in Chapter 17, NetBSD Logical Volume Manager (LVM) configuration, raidframe in Chapter 16, NetBSD RAIDframe. mdnsd provides a Multicast DNS service, and also DNS Service Discovery on NetBSD: check mdnsd(8) for more details.

Finally, the menu in Figure 3.31, “Configuration menu” lets you to add a regular user to the system. For all the base information about users and root accounts, as well as the wheel group, refer to Section 5.6, “Adding users”.

When you completed the configuration of all the desired items, choose “Finished configuring” in Figure 3.31, “Configuration menu”.

At this point the installation is finished.

After passing the dialog that confirms the installation, sysinst will return to the main menu. Remove any installation media (CD, floppy, etc.) and choose “Reboot the computer” to boot your new NetBSD installation.