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Nextstation Installation

This file contains the procedure for installing a new operating system on the Astrophysics NeXT machines. This was contributed by Ejaz Ahmad and was last revised on May 11, 1995 and put into HTML format by Chandra on March 27, 1996.

You will need the NeXTStep 3.2 CD, CD-ROM installation diskette, Upgrade_Info diskette containing local site information. All of these are in the top drawer of the file cabinet in WM 273, in the brown box marked NeXTstep Academic bundle.

  1. Power down the NeXT, connect CD-ROM drive.
  2. Put NeXTStep 3.2 CD-ROM in drive.
  3. Put the boot floppy [CD-ROM installation diskette] into the floppy drive.
  4. Restart the NeXT. When it says "Testing System", press "Command ~". Type bfd at angle bracket prompt to boot from installation floppy.
  5. Type yes to all questions. When you see a series of dots, go away for 4 hours.
  6. Hit Carriage Return to restart the NeXT. It will say something like "Cannot find parent Netinfo domain etc," type Control c to continue.
  7. Login is as me. Set the time. Put passwd for me from terminal window using passwd. Logout.
  8. Login as root. Set the root password.
  9. Copy the hostconfig file named after the machine from the Upgrade Info diskette: /Upgrade_Info/hostconfig/machine to /etc/hostconfig. For example copy the file named /Upgrade_Info/hosconfig/lyrebird to /etc/hostconfig if you are trying to rebuild Lyrebird.
  10. Start the HostManager application from /NextAdmin directory. Choose the local menu. A window will open up showing the hostconfig info. Change the NetInfo binding to "Use local domain only". Click set. The machine will ask to reboot. Type yes and reboot.
  11. Copy the following files from the Upgrade_Info diskette to /etc. passwd, group, shells, resolv.conf, hosts.
  12. Link /usr/local to /LocalApps/bin and TeX files 
        mkdir /usr/local
    ln -s /LocalApps/bin /usr/local/bin
    ln -s /NextLibrary/TeX/mf /usr/lib/mf
    ln -s /NextLibrary/TeX/tex /usr/lib/tex
  13. Load the fstab and printer information into netinfo database: 
        cd /Upgrade_Info
    niload fstab / < fstab.n
    niload printcap / < printcap.n
  14. Restart the NeXT. It should be ready for use.

Booting into single User

Pressing Right command and the ~ buttons during the startup will bring up the full console window. To boot into single user type bsd -s. If the machine is already running, you can also use shutdown now as root. Once the machine is in single user mode, you can return it to the multiuser mode by typing halt -p and turning the power back on after the machine is powered down. On powerup, some nexts seem to forget where they are supposed to boot from. In that case pressing Command and ~ key together followed by typing bsd seems to boot them into multiuser. In case you screwed up and removed the working fstab, the machine will still boot into single user using what it calls fake root mounts. However /etc in this mode is readonly and you can not fix anything until you issue the command 
mount -o remount /dev/sd0a /

Filesystems

We have moved all the locally installed applications to /wombat/NeXT/LocalApps. Similarly a full copy of the NextLibrary, NextDeveloper are made from wombat (400 MB disk machine) to /wombat/NeXT. This disk is exported to all the Nexts and it is mounted as /wombat/NeXT with the proper symbolic links made.

The /etc/fstab file on the NeXTStations is useful only for the local (type 4.3) filesystems. You need the single line with the /dev/sd0a mounting root. Otherwise the machine will not boot. The system ignores the nfs entries in there. That information is in the netinfo fstab database. To look at what is in the database, use the command 

nidump fstab /
You can create a temporary file in the fstab format that you would like to load (say fstab.niload) and use the following command to update the netinfo database. 
niload -v fstab / </etc/fstab.niload
If you have remove some entries in the netinfo database that are no longer valid you can add -r flag to the niload command. After the database is loaded with this command you can verify the contents with the nidump command and mount the newly added filesystems by using the command. 
mount -a -t nfs

Renaming Nextstations

  1. Login as root on the console
  2. Edit /etc/hosts file on the next to include the new IP number and the hostname. You can comment out the old one.
  3. Click on the Icon that looks like a Globe with a keyhole in the middle on the RightHandSide application docket. This will present you with the IP Configuration information. You may need to only change the IP number and name if the machine will be on the same subnet. If you are changing subnets, you will need to go to the advanced options and change the default router, broadcast address also. You then select the configure this machine button.