• NetBSD

  • NetBSD i386 10.0 ISO Size

Hi,

I downloaded NetBSD 10.0 i386 ISO and attempted to burn it to a CDROM. It was reported the ISO was too large. The image was downloaded from

https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-10.0/images/

I noticed it is 772M, but the CD has a max size of 700M. The 386 has 9.3 now.

Is my only option to use sysupgrade ? Or do smaller images exist ? The system does not support DVDs and I would prefer to boot from CD due to disk space considerations. Also my internet connection can be a bit flaky at times.

Thanks
John

Some notes for you:

  • The image you linked is the full image, containing full sets, enough for an offline installation. You said your internet connection is bad, if you're willing, there's a minimal ISO, enough to boot the install program. It needs to download the installation sets over a network.
  • You could build NetBSD with USE_XZ_SETS=yes and MKDEBUG=no in your mk.conf. This would produce a full ISO with a much smaller file size, but the installation would take much longer on old machines.
  • You could install NetBSD from floppy. Yes, this is still supported!

    sysupgrade should be better than downloading an ISO image, no?

    nia

    Thanks, I will try the mini iso first over the weekend. It should work since the connection issues I have is intermittent.

        jmcunx you could download the sets separately; saving time and data.

        sysupgrade fetch

        does this automatically.

            kc9udx
            Thanks, something to think about. I hope to upgrade that system over the weekend

                jmcunx make sure that /usr/pkg/etc/sysupgrade.conf has the correct NetBSD version and URL (or that you specify it explicitly) and if you've ever used it for a different version, make sure to sysupgrade clean first just to avoid any possible headaches.

                  11 days later

                  Are you sure it isn't also possible to squeeze 772MB on a CD too? I remember being able to overburn audio CDs by something around 10 minutes (100MB give or take) beyond their nominal capacity (maybe even more) and i guess this should also work for data. I might be wrong though.

                    nettester
                    I remember that too, but I do not remember how to do it. Since that PC is quite old, it may not boot off of an overburned CDROM 🙂

                    Life got in the way, plus I spent time adding cgd (Cpt 14 of the guide) to NetBSD on my T420. I will post here on the method I ended up using once I get to it.

                    • rvp replied to this.

                        jmcunx I remember that too, but I do not remember how to do it.

                        If overburning doesn't work, you could try writing the disc as XA Mode 2, Form 2 (2324 data bytes) instead of the standard ISO Mode 1 (2048 bytes): cdrecord -xa2 ...

                        Not sure if all drives will read ISO9660 data if written this way...