Doug McIntyre wrote:
> Logan Shaw <lshaw-usenet@austin.rr.com> writes:
>>I thought that was only when you boot from tape and not when you
>>boot from CD, or am I remembering wrong (entirely possible...)?

> Thats how you installed from any media (tape, the rare CD-ROM, or
> network install boot) for a SunOS v4.x system. No difference for the 3.

Oh, OK. That sounds right. I guess it was only with SunOS 5.x that
the CD-ROM contains a bootable system that's complete enough to do
installs.

> The hardest part is laying out the disk partitions by hand, with no
> aids to help you determine it unless you had a Sun disc that was
> already in the database and you choose Sun's default partition layout
> and sizes.

Yes, I remember a little over 10 years ago when I was learning to
install SunOS 4.1.x how frustrating it was to make decisions about
the size of the filesystems *before* selecting the software that
was to be installed. Perhaps the simplest method for someone who's
never done it before is to plan to install twice. First, pick
partitions that are obviously too big, then install, then figure out
how big they really need to be, fix them, and then install again.
It's an ugly method, but at least that way you ensure you don't
wind up doing it MORE than 2 times. :-)

> And of course, if you expect DNS to function, you'll either end up
> running a NIS server with DNS host resolution on it, or patching your
> system libs (patches, compilation and relinking) to believe DNS exists.

Ah yes, the days before nsswitch.conf. I had forgotten about that
as well because we had a script that did all that. But I did end
up having to do it by hand once or twice.

As I recall, old versions of BIND (perhaps versions up to 4.9?)
came with a library that could be used as a replacement for
the built-in libresolv.so, and then there was also libresolv+.
Hopefully I'm remembering that right.

> I could probably scan in some of the installation manual pages if
> needed, but I don't want to part with my manual set either.

I'm kind of surprised that the old Answerbooks aren't available
online somewhere. If I remember right, the actual data files were
in PostScript, so it seems like they could probably be read on a
modern system even without installing the Answerbook stuff.
(Maybe the original poster even has a CD with them on it along
with the install disk or something.)

- Logan