Table of Contents
To read the NetBSD sources from your local disk or to build the system, you need to download the NetBSD sources. This chapter explains a number of different ways to obtain the NetBSD sources, although the preferred method is to download the tarballs and then update via cvs(1).
Traditionally, the NetBSD kernel and userland sources are placed in
/usr/src. This directory is not present by
default in the NetBSD installation and you will need to create it
first. As it is in a system directory, you will need root access
to create the directory and make sure your normal user account
can write to it. For demonstration purposes, it is assumed that
the non-root login is carlo.
Please replace it with a valid login name on your system:
$suPassword:********#mkdir /usr/src#chown<carlo>/usr/src
If you want the sources to the X Window System, you should prepare
/usr/xsrc as well:
#mkdir /usr/xsrc#chown<carlo>/usr/xsrc
Please note that for the subsequent steps, root access is neither needed nor recommended, so this preparation step should be done first. All CVS operations can (and should) be done as normal user, so relinquish your root privileges:
#exit$
Before starting to fetch or download the required files, you may want to know the definitions of “Formal releases”, “Maintenance branches” and other related terms. That information is available under the NetBSD release glossary and graphs.
It is sometimes faster to begin by downloading a source tarball.
You can download tarballs (see tar(1)) from ftp.NetBSD.org
(or any other mirror) for a number of releases or
branches. These tarballs include the CVS
directories, so you can continue to update your source tree using
cvs(1), as explained in the CVS section.
Note that source tarballs for stable branches are only updated every three days.
The source files to a release do not change after the release has been made.
The tarballs for the sources of a specific release are
available under
/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-
on ftp.NetBSD.org (or a mirror),
where <RELEASE-NUMBER>/source/sets/<RELEASE-NUMBER> is the release you want to
fetch (for example, 9.2).
To fetch the sources of a NetBSD release using tarballs, simply do:
$ftp -i ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-9.2/source/sets/Trying 2001:470:a085:999::21:21 ... Connected to ftp.NetBSD.org. 220 ftp.NetBSD.org FTP server (NetBSD-ftpd 20180428) ready. 331 Guest login ok, type your name as password. [...] 250 CWD command successful. ftp>mget *.tgzlocal: gnusrc.tgz remote: gnusrc.tgz 229 Entering Extended Passive Mode (|||61968|) 150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for 'gnusrc.tgz' (152604808 bytes). [...] ftp>quit221- 221 Thank you for using the FTP service on ftp.NetBSD.org.
You should now have 5 files:
$ls *.tgzgnusrc.tgz sharesrc.tgz src.tgz syssrc.tgz xsrc.tgz
You now must extract them all:
$for file in *.tgz>do>tar -xzf $file -C />done
$ftp -i ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-release-9/tar_files/src/Trying 2001:470:a085:999::21:21 ... Connected to ftp.NetBSD.org. 220 ftp.NetBSD.org FTP server (NetBSD-ftpd 20180428) ready. 331 Guest login ok, type your name as password. [...] 250 CWD command successful. ftp>mget *.tar.gzlocal: bin.tar.gz remote: bin.tar.gz 229 Entering Extended Passive Mode (|||56011|) 150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for 'bin.tar.gz' (996075 bytes). [...] ftp>quit221- Data traffic for this session was 429024351 bytes in 25 files. Total traffic for this session was 429035139 bytes in 26 transfers. 221 Thank you for using the FTP service on ftp.NetBSD.org.
You should now have 25 files:
$ls *.tar.gzbin.tar.gz doc.tar.gz libexec.tar.gz tools.tar.gz common.tar.gz etc.tar.gz regress.tar.gz top-level.tar.gz compat.tar.gz external.tar.gz rescue.tar.gz usr.bin.tar.gz config.tar.gz extsrc.tar.gz sbin.tar.gz usr.sbin.tar.gz crypto.tar.gz games.tar.gz share.tar.gz dist.tar.gz include.tar.gz sys.tar.gz distrib.tar.gz lib.tar.gz tests.tar.gz
You now must extract them all:
$for file in *.tar.gz>do>tar -xzf $file -C /usr>done
To download the NetBSD-current tarballs, located under
/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-current/tar_files/src,
just follow the same steps as in
Section 32.3.2, “Downloading sources for a NetBSD stable branch”, but
using this path.
You may also want to fetch the X Window System sources, available
under:
/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-current/tar_files/xsrc.
CVS (Concurrent Versions System) can be used to fetch the NetBSD source tree or to keep the NetBSD source tree up to date with respect to changes made to the NetBSD sources. There are two main source modules available through cvs(1), “src” and “xsrc”.
The list of currently maintained branches is available under
src/doc/BRANCHES (see the
“Status” entry on the “Release branches”
section).
Be sure to take care in selecting the correct and desired branch tag so you don't accidentally downgrade your source tree.
Before you can do an initial (full) checkout of the NetBSD
sources via anonymous CVS, you
must set the CVSROOT environment variable, which
tells cvs(1) where to fetch the files from:
$export CVSROOT="anoncvs@anoncvs.NetBSD.org:/cvsroot"
Make sure that the environment variable CVS_RSH
is set to “ssh”.
$export CVS_RSH="ssh"
In the examples below, we use the -P option,
which tells CVS to prune empty directories.
The source files to a release do not change after the release has been made.
To get the NetBSD (kernel and userland) sources for a specific
release, run the following command after setting
CVSROOT as shown above:
$cd /usr$cvs checkout -r<TAG>-P src
Where <TAG> is the release tag
to be checked out, e.g., “netbsd-9-2-RELEASE”. If you
want to fetch a later patchlevel, you would use, e.g.,
“netbsd-9-2-RELEASE”.
For example, in order to fetch the sources for NetBSD 9.2, you would use the “netbsd-9-2-RELEASE” tag:
$cvs checkout -r netbsd-9-2-RELEASE -P src
To fetch the X Window System source, just “checkout” the “xsrc” module. For example:
$cvs checkout -r netbsd-9-2-RELEASE -P xsrc
NetBSD stable branches are a flavor of “Maintenance branches”. Please consult the Section 32.2, “Terminology”.
If you want to follow a stable branch, just pass the
branch name to the cvs(1) -r
option.
For example, if you want to fetch the most recent version of “netbsd-9”, you just need to use that tag:
$cd /usr$cvs checkout -r netbsd-9 -P src
And for the “xsrc” module:
$cvs checkout -r netbsd-9 -P xsrc
If you have checked out sources from a stable branch in
/usr/src and want
to update them to get the latest security and bug fixes, run:
$cd /usr/src$cvs update -dP
The same applies to the “xsrc” module, but in
that case you will have to change your working directory to
/usr/xsrc first.
To obtain the NetBSD-current source just omit
“-r <BRANCH>”
and replace it with “-A”:
$cd /usr$cvs checkout -A -P src
The “xsrc” module is obtained the same way:
$cd /usr$cvs checkout -A -P xsrc
To update your NetBSD-current source tree, add the
-A flag:
$cd /usr/src$cvs update -A -dP
The same applies to the “xsrc” module, but in
that case you will have to change your working directory to
/usr/xsrc first.
If you find yourself typing the same options to CVS over and over
again, you may want to make those options the default by adding them
to .cvsrc in your home directory.
In the following example, cvs update will add any
missing newly-added directories to your tree, as well as delete any
newly-empty directories. Also shown are examples of how to make
cvs rdiff and cvs diff use
the unified diff(1) format. The final line in the example
causes CVS to be a bit more quiet in its operation.