Installing Gentoo/NetBSD

1.  Introduction to NetBSD

What is NetBSD?

NetBSD is a free, secure, and highly portable Unix-like Open Source operating system available for many platforms, from 64-bit Opteron machines and desktop systems to handheld and embedded devices.

Back in 1993 when development of 386BSD stopped, two projects were born: FreeBSD which focuses mainly on the x86 platform, and NetBSD, commonly known to run on a huge number of architetures.

2.  Installing Gentoo/NetBSD

Installation instructions

You can use a qemu disk image or vmware image if you're installing Gentoo/NetBSD in virtual machine.If so, just download: gentoo-netbsd-image or gentoo-netbsd-vmware and make few more steps:

# emerge sync
# echo "x86-nbsd" >> /usr/portage/profiles/arch.list
# emerge metadata

Unfortunately the Gentoo/NetBSD project currently has no official installation media, so you have to download an ISO image of a NetBSD LiveCD which can be found here.

Burn this image to a CD and use it boot your computer. Please log in as user 'root', using 'NetBSD' as a password. Once logged in, you have to create and format partitions for your Gentoo/NetBSD installation. If you're unsure on how to do this, please consult the section "Adding a new hard disk" of the NetBSD manual.

# fdisk -u wdX
Creating a partition.
# fdisk -a wdX
Mark a partition as active.
#  disklabel -i wdX
Substitute X to reflect your setup.
#  newfs /dev/wdXY
Substitute X and Y to reflect the correct disk/slice.

When you are done with setting up your disk, create a mount point where you mount the previously created partitions.

# mkdir /var/gentoo
# mount /dev/wdXY /var/gentoo
(Replace X and Y with the correct numbers for your hard disk.)

Now that you have mounted the target partition, it is time to fetch and unpack a stage3 tarball and syncing your portage tree.

# cd /var/gentoo 
# ftp http://dev.gentoo.org/~thunder/distfiles/gentoo-netbsd-stage3-051106.tar.bz2
# tar -xjpf gentoo-netbsd-stage3-051106.tar.bz2
# chroot /var/gentoo /bin/bash
# env-update
# emerge sync
# echo "x86-nbsd" >> /usr/portage/profiles/arch.list
# emerge metadata

Congrats, you now should be able to update your Gentoo/NetBSD installation using Portage! But in order to be able to boot your new system later on, you will have to install a boot manager or add Gentoo/NetBSD to your current boot loader's configuration. Additionally you will have to populate your /dev dirctory with the necessary device nodes. Finally you'll have to edit your /etc/fstab to reflect your partition layout.

# cd /dev
# ./MAKEDEV all
# fdisk -B /dev/wdX
Once again, substitute X to reflect your setup.
# installboot -v /dev/rwdXY /usr/mdec/bootxx_ffsv1
Where wdXY is your root partition.
# vi /etc/fstab
You now have to edit /etc/rc.conf, to set the option rc_configured to YES
# vi /etc/rc.conf

We hope you will enjoy your new Gentoo/NetBSD system and will have fun using it!

3.  Contact

Gentoo/NetBSD currently is official Gentoo project, and all your suggestions, questions etc. should go to BSD Mailing List

The contents of this document, unless otherwise expressly stated, are licensed under the CC-BY-SA-2.5 license. The Gentoo Name and Logo Usage Guidelines apply.