Owl installation is currently more complicated than we'd like it to
be.  This is going to change with future releases.

Currently, there're two primary ways to install Owl, -- by booting off
an Owl CD or by using another Linux installation you may already have.


	Installing from a local CD-ROM drive.

If you don't already have an Owl CD, please either order one or see
DOWNLOAD for locations where you may obtain the ISO-9660 CD images and
burn one onto a CD-R.

The Owl CDs for x86 are bootable, so if your machine supports booting
off a CD just do so.  Otherwise take the boot floppy image from the CD
under boot/floppy.image, write it onto a formatted 1.44 MB floppy
(with dd(1) or an equivalent tool), and boot off the floppy.  In
either case, the boot loader will prompt you for your CD-ROM device
which the kernel will use for the root filesystem.

Owl should boot into single user mode.  At the root password prompt
you can either just press Enter (as the CDs have a null password) or
press Ctrl-D to let the system boot into multi-user right away (not
recommended).  If you chose to enter a single user shell, you have a
chance to optionally configure the CD-booted system by simply typing:

	setup

The configuration will be stored in RAM (parts of /etc and /var are on
a ramdisk).  You may then let the system boot into multi-user by
exiting the shell.  Of course, this step is optional and is only
needed if it is more convenient to complete the installation while in
multi-user mode (such as, operating from a remote workstation) or if
you intend to actually use the CD-booted Owl without installing on a
hard disk.

To actually install Owl, proceed with the generic installation
instructions, below.


	Using an existing Linux installation.

Note: these requirements are only relevant to you if you chose to not
install from an Owl CD for whatever reason.  Most people use a CD and
don't need this.

A suitable Linux installation needs to offer some GNU tools and
rpm2cpio.  It does not have to use RPM as its package manager.

You need to prepare the usual /usr/src/world setup as explained in
BUILD.  Then proceed with the generic installation instructions.


	Generic installation instructions.

Use fdisk(8) to partition your disks for Owl as desired.  Use mkfs(8)
and mkswap(8) to create filesystems and initialize swap space.  Use
mount(8) to mount the new root filesystem at /owl.  Similarly, mount
any additional filesystems at their appropriate locations under /owl.
To actually install Owl, change directory to /usr/src/world and type:

	make installworld && make setup

If there are any problems during the "installworld" stage (watch for
the "Failed" lines), correct their cause and re-run the command.

Once the Owl userland is installed, you need to also install a kernel
and configure a boot loader.  It is recommended that you build the
kernel from source in order to better tune it to your needs.

Note that the kernel build and the boot loader setup need to be done
chrooted to your newly installed userland:

	chroot /owl

Currently, Owl supports Linux 2.2.x and 2.4.x kernels.  We recommend
that you build the version provided with Owl.

You may choose to configure the boot loader available with Owl (LILO
or SILO, depending on the architecture), or you may use a boot loader
already installed on the system (if any).

$Id: INSTALL,v 1.11 2003/05/16 00:16:30 solar Exp $
