This is a brief description of howto create a bootable 2.11BSD tape from the files in this directory. First you should have a set of files/directories that look like this: total 31653 -rw-r----- 1 root wheel 135 Apr 22 21:12 .mkisofsrc -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 3410 Apr 22 21:13 HOWTO -rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 35236 Apr 22 20:50 boot -rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 63 Apr 22 20:19 cdw -rw-r--r-- 1 sms wheel 1201381 Apr 23 20:36 chown+chmod.sh -rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 37881 Apr 22 20:51 disklabel -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 11681254 Apr 22 20:57 file6.tar.gz -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 1378438 Apr 22 20:57 file7.tar.gz -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 14098801 Apr 22 20:58 file8.tar.gz -rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 33032 Apr 22 20:51 icheck -rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 493 Apr 22 20:56 m -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 2172 Apr 28 1991 maketape.c -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 95 Aug 7 1997 maketape.data -rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 57 Apr 22 20:19 mk -rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 33158 Apr 22 20:51 mkfs -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 490 Apr 22 20:51 mtboot -rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 35742 Apr 22 20:51 restor drwxr-xr-x 14 sms wheel 1024 Apr 22 20:22 root -rw-r--r-- 1 sms wheel 3440640 Apr 23 20:18 root.dump -rw-r--r-- 1 sms wheel 344682 Oct 27 1997 setup.ps You can ignore .mkisofsrc, cdw, mk and root but you must have AT LEAST boot disklabel file6.tar.gz file7.tar.gz file8.tar.gz icheck mkfs mtboot restor root.dump file6.tar is a tar archive containing usr/ without usr/src or usr/include. file7.tar is a tar archive containing usr/src/sys and usr/src/include file8.tar is a tar archvie containing everything else in usr/ setup.ps is a Postscript version of the setup/installation documentation The format of a 2.11BSD boot tape is: File Blocksize Content 0 512 mtboot 512 mtboot 512 boot 1 1024 disklabel 2 1024 mkfs 3 1024 restor 4 1024 icheck 5 10240 root.dump 6 10240 file6.tar 7 10240 file7.tar 8 10240 file8.tar Traditionally 2.11BSD was distributed on 2 1600bpi 9-track tapes and file8.tar was on the second volume. The bare MINIMUM boot tape consists of the first 6 files (the standalone utilities and root.dump). That is enough to load the root filesystem and boot from disk and use tar to load the remaining files (which could be sneakernet'd over one per tape if necessary/desired). There are two ways to write a boot tape. The first uses 'dd' (the name /dev/nrst0 is used below - substitute local conventions): cat mtboot mtboot boot | dd of=/dev/nrst0 obs=512 dd if=disklabel of=/dev/nrst0 obs=1024 dd if=mkfs of=/dev/nrst0 obs=1024 dd if=restor of=/dev/nrst0 obs=1024 dd if=icheck of=/dev/nrst0 obs=1024 dd if=root.dump of=/dev/nrst0 obs=10240 dd if=file6.tar of=/dev/nrst0 obs=10240 dd if=file7.tar of=/dev/nrst0 obs=10240 dd if=file8.tar of=/dev/nrst0 obs=10240 maketape.c is a simple C program which reads a small configuration file (maketape.data) and will write the tape: cc -o maketape maketape.c ./maketape /dev/nrst0 maketape.data maketape.data by default looks like this: mtboot 1 mtboot 1 boot 1 * 1 disklabel 2 * 1 mkfs 2 * 1 restor 2 * 1 icheck 2 * 1 root.dump 20 and will write only the first 5 files. You may either add the lines: * 1 file6.tar 20 * 1 file7.tar 20 * 1 file8.tar 20 or simply run the 3 'dd' commands manually.