.\"	$NetBSD: prep,v 1.4 2014/11/13 08:16:42 snj Exp $
.
First and foremost, before beginning the installation process,
.Em make sure you have a reliable backup
of any data on your hard disk that you wish to keep,
including existing Windows NT partition.
Mistakes in partitioning your hard disk may lead to data loss.
.Nx*M
is still in very experimental state so unexpected trouble could
also happen even on normal operations.
.Pp
.
.Ss2 Available Boot Media
.
The ARC firmware on most machines allows for system booting using:
.(bullet -compact
Local floppy disk, hard disk or CD-ROM with the following file systems:
.(bullet -compact
MS-DOS (FAT12) file system
.It
ISO9660 CD-ROM file system
.bullet)
.bullet)
.Pp
Some ARC implementation might support netboot, but the
.Nx*M
bootloader doesn't support netboot due to lack of information.
.Pp
There are no bootable floppies in the distribution because the
.Nx*M
bootloader doesn't support loading a kernel from multiple floppies
and the installation kernel is too large to fit one floppy.
.
.Ss2 Preparing the Bootable Media
.
This section describes how to get a
.Nx*M
install kernel onto a CD-R.
.Pp
Go to one of the
.Nx
mirror sites and download CD-R image from the
.Pa pub/NetBSD/images
directory.
.Lk http://www.NetBSD.org/mirrors/#iso
.Pp
Get and install cdrecord.
This is available in the packages collection under pkgsrc/sysutils/cdrtools.
Systems not supported by the packages
collection should get it from the official website:
.br
.Lk ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/pkgsrc/sysutils/cdrtools/README.html
.br
.Lk http://cdrecord.berlios.de/old/private/cdrecord.html
.Pp
.(disp
.No # Ic "cdrecord -v speed=16 dev=/dev/cd0d NetBSD-arc-\*V.iso"
.disp)
.Pp
You will need to substitute the correct name of the disk image file,
speed for your CD writer, and the
correct device for your system (for i386 it would be
.Pa /dev/cd0d ) .
.
.Ss2 Booting from CD-ROM and Hard disk
.
To boot from a CD-ROM and a hard disk, choose the
.Sq Run a program
menu on the ARC BIOS prompt and specify the
.Sq Ic boot
program with appropriate boot device paths.
The first argument is a path to bootloader, and
the second argument is a path to a kernel to be loaded.
.Pp
The device pathnames might be machine dependent.
See
.Dq Advanced RISC Computing Specification
found in
.Nx*M
page
.Lk http://www.NetBSD.org/ports/arc/index.html
for details.
.Pp
.(bullet -compact
Booting a kernel from the installation CD-ROM:
.(disp
.Ic scsi(0)cdrom(4)fdisk(0)boot scsi(0)cdrom(4)fdisk(0)netbsd
.disp)
.(Note
.Sq Pq Pa 0
after
.Sq Pa scsi
is used to specify SCSI interfaces. If your boot devices are connected to
the secondary SCSI, use
.Sq Pa scsi Ns Pq 1
instead.
.Pp
.Sq Pq Pa 4
after
.Sq Pa cdrom
is a SCSI ID of the CD-ROM.
You might have to use a different number.
.Note)
.Pp
.It
Booting a kernel in the FAT partition via bootloader in the same FAT partition:
.(disp
.Ic scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)boot scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)netbsd
.disp)
.Pp
.It
Booting a kernel in the FFS partition via bootloader in the FAT partition:
.(disp
.Ic scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)boot scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)netbsd
.disp)
.Pp
.(Note
.Sq Pq Pa 0
after
.Sq Pa disk
is the SCSI ID of the disk.
You might have to use a different number.
.Pp
.Sq Pq Pa 1
and
.Sq Pq Pa 2
after
.Sq Pa partition
are the partition numbers of the FDISK (MBR) partition of the disk.
Usually the FAT partition (which is mandatory for the bootloader) is in
the first partition and
.Nx*M
will be installed in the second partition, so use
.Sq Pa partition(1)
for a bootloader and specify
.Sq Pa partition(2)
for the
.Nx*M
kernel after it's installed in the
.Nx*M
partition.
.Note)
.bullet)
Once you have successfully installed
.Nx*M ,
you can store the above default boot command into NV-RAM with the
.Sq Sy Run setup
and
.Sq Sy Manage startup
commands on the ARC BIOS menu.