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NetBSD 10.0 amd64 quick start

13th April 2024: Installed NetBSD 10.0 RC 5 and then upgraded to RC 6, and finally 10.0 release. Updated packages.

Installing NetBSD 10.0 RC 5 on a Thinkpad T60 Core Duo laptop with 3Gb RAM and a 500Gb mechanical hard drive. The laptop has Intel integrated graphics. Wifi disabled in BIOS. I use a cable into the router for installing packages because I use this old laptop as a writing machine because of its nice keyboard and large scale monitor. Suspend to RAM works. Firefox is actually ok with ublock origin installed but I don't use it much. Everything else is snappy.

Install the base system (more or less default)

The Thinkpad has a 1024x768 pixel screen. If you get an error from the sysinst installer script about 'screen too narrow' drop to a command prompt and use the work around below.

# wsconsctl -dw font=Boldface

Then exit the command shell to resume the installation.

Set up a desktop and install software

I install a small number of graphical applications.

Connect to wired network

Put the lines below into /etc/rc.conf and reboot with cable connected.

dhcpcd=YES
dhcpcd_flags="-w"

I had to supply a hostname for the laptop in /etc/myname possibly because I installed offline and did not configure a network interface.

T60$ cat /etc/myname
T60$

As you can see, the hostname is used as the prompt in a terminal window.

Install binary packages with `pkg_add` and `pkgin`

The .profile for the root account has the URL of the package repository commented out - just uncomment and then install packages. I used pkg_add once to install pkgin.

I used pkgin to install Firefox, GIMP, abiword, gnumeric, xpdf and some other bits and pieces to do with groff typesetting. I eventually installed fluxbox as the default window manager ctwm was a step too minimal. I also installed xbattbar to provide a battery indicator. Installing Libreoffice brought in 2.5Gb of dependencies but worked fine.

I also installed the Intel microcode package and enabled microcode in /etc/rc.conf.

Start daemons using `/etc/rc.conf`

You have to enable demons in /etc/rc.conf. Below is my collection. Includes basic power management, wired internet connection, and ~~Japanese knot weed~~ dbus.

#[snipped a dozen lines of comments]
# If this is not set to YES, the system will drop into single-user mode.
#
rc_configured=YES

# Add local overrides below.
#
wscons=YES
dhcpcd=YES
dhcpcd_flags="-w"
ntpdate=YES
rpcbind=YES
dbus=YES
microcode=YES
powerd=YES

Fluxbox and Xorg stuff

I added my time zone to my ~/.profile so that British Summer Time is correctly picked up here.

export TZ=Europe/London

I used a minimal .xinitrc

T60$ cat .xinitrc
xrdb -merge /home/keith/.Xdefaults
uxterm -ls &
exec /usr/pkg/bin/fluxbox

And my usual .Xdefaults

T60$ cat .Xdefaults
! Font settings for TTF fonts
Xft.dpi: 96
Xft.autohint: 0
Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault
Xft.hintstyle: hintslight
Xft.hinting: 1
Xft.antialias: 1
Xft.rgba: rgb
!uxterm stuff
*xterm*reverseVideo: true
UXTerm*scrollBar: true
UXTerm*rightScrollBar: true
! Pinched from a blog post
! https://aduros.com/blog/xterm-its-better-than-you-thought/
UXTerm.vt100.translations: #override \n\
    Ctrl Shift N: scroll-back(1, halfpage) \n\
    Ctrl Shift T: scroll-forw(1, halfpage) \n\
    Ctrl Shift C: copy-selection(CLIPBOARD) \n\
    Ctrl Shift V: insert-selection(CLIPBOARD) \n\
    Ctrl Shift H: set-altscreen(toggle)
! I find the overstrike bold letters harder to read with bitmapped fonts
UXTerm*allowBoldFonts: false

Fluxbox is stock apart from some additions to the root menu.

      [exec] (uxterm) {uxterm -ls}
      [exec] (firefox) {firefox}
      [exec] (abiword) {abiword}
      [exec] (gnumeric) {gnumeric}
      [exec] (gimp) {gimp}
      [exec] (xpdf) {xpdf}

I like my xterms to be login sessions so I use uxterm -ls to start a terminal window.

Twiddly bits: sound, locale

Sound 'just works' when playing an mp3 file using mpg123, including the volume keys on the Thinkpad keyboard. That is about as far as I have got with multimedia.

The language and keyboard settings that I set in the installation carried over to the installed system fine. So I have a GB / UK keyboard layout both in X and in the ttys. All UTF-8.

Upgrading 10.0 RC 5 to RC 6 and then to release

I used the upgrade from installation image method.

Downloaded the image for NetBSD 10.0 RC 6 (and later the 10.0 release)
gunzipped the image
dd'ed the image to my usb stick drive
Booted the T60 off the drive
Fixed the console font so it was small enough to allow sysinst to run properly
Selected Install then Yes then Upgrade
Selected the disk in the T60 as the system to upgrade
Started the upgrade. The package sets were basically unpacked and copied over the old sets
Selected BIOS bootblocks when asked about bootblocks
Rebooted once the various messages had finished.
Logged in as usual

31-Mar-2023: same procedure worked to update to the release from the NetBSD 10.0 amd64 image.

Then I checked the /root/.profile for the URL of the package repository. See below

export PKG_PATH="https://cdn.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/$(uname -p)/$(uname -r|cut -f '1 2' -d.|cut -f 1 -d_)/All"

The path is automatically set to the appropriate version, but the $(uname -r|cut -f '1 2' -d.|cut -f 1 -d_) command removes the _RC6 section of the operating system version string in the RC versions. It is still present on the release version but does nothing.

Lots of updates after two weeks: running the pkgin update command downloaded a new package database, then running the pkgin upgrade command resulted in about 1.5Gb of package updates including the usual suspects: Libreoffice now version 24 and Firefox now version 123.01 but still marked 'nightly'.

Keith Burnett, 13th April 2024.