NAME

sysinst — install or upgrade a NetBSD system

SYNOPSIS

sysinst

[-D] [-f definition_file] [-r release]

DESCRIPTION

sysinst is a menu-based program that may be used to install or upgrade a NetBSD system. It is usually invoked automatically when the system is booted from appropriate installation media.

sysinst is usually not present on a NetBSD system that has been fully installed.

The following options are available:

-D

Switch on debugging.

-f definition_file

Use definition_file as a file for definitions other than the defaults. See the DEFINITION FILE section for its format.

-r release

Use release as the release name if it is different to the one compiled. Currently unused.

DEFINITION FILE

A definition file can be used with sysinst to control several aspects of the installation or upgrade process. Options can be stored within the file as

option = value

pairs. Options include the following, shown with their defaults as well as a description (“REL” and “MACH” are the release and architecture respectively, as determined by the image sysinst is used on):

option name	default value	description
release	REL	Release name (also set by -r release)
machine	MACH	Machine architecture
xfer dir	/usr/INSTALL	Transfer dir
ext dir		Extract dir (will usually be set later on)
ftp host	ftp.NetBSD.org	FTP host for fetching files
ftp dir	pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-REL	FTP directory for fetching files
ftp prefix	/MACH/binary/sets	Directory to look for sets, used for all methods of fetching (i.e., not just FTP)
ftp user	ftp	FTP user for connecting
ftp pass	-	FTP password
ftp proxy	-	FTP proxy
nfs host	-	NFS host for fetching via NFS
nfs dir	/bsd/release	NFS directory for fetching files
cd dev	cd0a	Name of CD device for fetching files
fd dev	/dev/fd0a	Name of floppy device for fetching files
local dev	-	Other device to be mounted for fetching files
local fs	ffs	File system type for local device
local dir	release	Directory to look for in the mounted local file system
targetroot mount	/targetroot	Directory to mount target root dir to
dist postfix	.tgz	Suffix of set files to be extracted
diskname	mydisk	disktab(5) diskname to use for target disk

SEE ALSO

release(7), afterboot(8), boot(8), diskless(8)

<machine>/INSTALL.* files on CD-ROM installation media .../NetBSD-<rel>/<machine>/INSTALL.* files in NetBSD releases or snapshots.

HISTORY

A sysinst command appeared in NetBSD 1.3.