Re: Best Way to Install Software without Internet Connection

mowestusa wrote:
> I have an old Pentium 166 with 32 megs of ram. I would
> like to install NetBSD on this machine, but I'm
> wondering how I would go about adding programs after
> the install.

> It seems like pkgscr would not be the best without an
> internet connection on the computer. It also would
> take a while to compile on such an old machine.

last time I compiled on a machine like that (P133 with 32MB) it took 
several weeks just to get a basic desktop.

> So I was wondering about the binary packages that are
> available. Can one download the whole lot and fit them
> on a CD and simple install from there?

you are correct, this would be your best route. if you were going to do 
a 3.1 install then the matching binary pkg cd is:
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/iso/3.1/i386pkg-3.1.iso

> Are there other options that I have not considered?

I would recommend the pkg cd. Your only other options I can think of are 
build from pkgsrc! or manually download relevant binary packages and all 
their dependencies.

The LiveCD may be an option but I'm not even aware if you can install 
from it so I'm unable to help with that.

If you really want to compile from source then investigate cross 
compiling pkgsrc on another machine. There is not much point in 
compiling from source if you are following a standard release.

> Thank you for any direction or documentation you could
> point out to this newbie.

details of the contents of the pkg cd.
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/iso/3.1/README-i386pkg

ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/iso/3.1/i386cd-3.1.iso
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/iso/3.1/i386pkg-3.1.iso

Simon