Downloading and Extracting the Binary Distribution

If you have not yet read the section on Planning Your System, please do so now.

Your first step is of course to download the distribution. The distribution is available from ftp://ftp.gno.org/pub/apple2/gs.specific/gno/base. You should have the following NuFX archives:

gnoboot.shk This is the GNO installation bootstrap disk. It should be extracted to a ProDOS-formatted 800k floppy disk named “/gno.boot” (the name is critical). It does not include a copy of GS/OS and is therefore not bootable; you will have to boot your system in the normal fashion.
gno.01.shk, gno.02.shk, ... gno.16.shk These disk archives contain the main portion of the GNO distribution. They must be placed in a single temporary subdirectory on a hard drive, Zip disk, Appleshare volume, or other large capacity storage device. They should not yet be extracted.
gnohfs.shk This archive consists of files that do not conform to ProDOS naming conventions. It should be placed into the same directory as were the files gno.01.shk, gno.02.shk, ... gno.16.shk. While it is possible to run GNO without any HFS partitions at all, it is recommended that you have available to GNO a small amount of space on an HFS partition. If you use the namespace(5) facility, it is unnecessary to dedicate an entire HFS partition to GNO. Note that Appleshare volumes may be used in lieu of HFS volumes.

Using the Finder or a similar program, ensure that you have an empty ProDOS partition /gno , and an HFS or AppleShare partition online. The former may be named something else, but note the instructions below for handling this situation. The latter is assumed to be called /gno-hfs (modify the following instructions accordingly), and need not be otherwise empty. The two subdirectories HFSinclude and man will be created on /gno-hfs during the installation process.

Next, using GS-ShrinkIt or a similar program, extract the contents of the file gnoboot.shk onto an 800k floppy named gno.boot. The name of the floppy is critical. While you may use a hard drive partition for gno.boot, this is likely a waste of hard drive space since gno.bootwill only be used while installing GNO, not while running it.

People have also reported that they were able to use a RAM disk for gno.bootwithout problems (thanks to Kirk Mitchell for first reporting this).

You should now do the following steps:

From your program launcher (typically the Finder), run the program /gno.boot/kern. This is the GNO kernel. It will come up in single user mode and you will be logged in as root running a gsh shell session.
Note that the boot disk currently uses the version 2.0.4 GNO kernel; this is a temporary measure due to a bug with using newer kernels in single user mode. When GNO is installed on your hard drive, you will have a newer kernel.
As per the instructions shown on the boot screen, you should now read the file /gno.boot/README.install. The contents of that file, however, are identical to the numerated instructions below; you need only read one or the other set.
Set your DOWNLOAD_DIR environment variable to the directory into which you placed the base distribution NuFX archive files (gnoboot.shk, gnohfs.shk, gno.01.shk, and so forth). For example, if the NuFX files were in /download, you would type:
```
	setenv DOWNLOAD_DIR /download
```
Ensure that you use slashes (“/”) rather than colons (“:”) as the pathname delimiter. Do not use a trailing slash.
Install the majority of the GNO base distribution files by changing directory into your destination directory and running the installboot1 script. Assuming that you will be installing to the partition /gno, the commands would be:
```
	cd /gno
	/gno.boot/installboot1
```
This step takes quite a while, even with an accelerated IIgs. Have patience.
There are a small number of recommended files that do not follow ProDOS naming conventions. If you wish to install these files, make sure that you have an HFS or Appleshare disk online. Change directories to that disk (or subdirectory) and run installboot2. Assuming that the HFS disk is /gno-hfs, the commands are:
```
	cd /gno-hfs
	/gno.boot/installboot2
```
This step is optional. It is possible to use the GNO binary distribution without an HFS partition, but some information will be missing.
You should now edit the file /gno/etc/namespace. If your files were extracted onto a volume other than /gno, you will have to replace all the “:gno:” strings with the appropriate path. Similarily, you will have to replace “:gno-hfs:” if that is not the name of your HFS (or Appleshare) partition where you ran the installboot2 script. Note that you cannot currently use pathnames in the namespace file that contain spaces.
The gno.boot disk includes the vi utility to do these edits. You can also edit the namespace file with any other text editor of your choosing, as long as it is done before you try to run your new GNO distribution.
A vi tutorial and quick reference guide may be found at http://www.jaws.umn.edu/~tobkin/vi.
For a description of the namespace file, see the kernel reference manual, or the namespace(5) manual page at http://www.gno.org/~gno/man/man5/namespace.5.html
During the extraction process, the following files were placed into the /gno/System directory:
```
	/gno/System/Desk.Accs/GNOSnooperII
	/gno/System/Desk.Accs/SuspDA
	/gno/System/Desk.Accs/TMTerm
	/gno/System/Drivers/FilePort
	/gno/System/Drivers/FilePort.Data
	/gno/System/Drivers/NullPort
	/gno/System/System.Setup/GNOBug
	/gno/System/System.Setup/SIM
```
It is recommended that these files be copied into the relevent directories in the System folder of your boot partition. The GNOBug PIF is only required if you have GSBug installed. If you install GNOBug you should afterward sort the System.Setup directory so that GNOBug appears before GSBug (the latter of which is commonly called “debug.init”).
If you are not short of disk space, you should create .so links for your manual pages. (See the mkso(8) man page for an explanation.) You can do this by executing the following commands:
```
	cd /gno/usr/man
	mkso -v -H /gno-hfs/man mkso.data
```
If you installed GNO somewhere other than /gno and /gno-hfs, then edit the above lines accordingly. If you did not install files onto an HFS (or Appleshare) partition at all, then execute the following commands instead:
```
	cd /gno/usr/man
	mkso -v mkso.data
```
You can now return to your program launcher (the Finder, ProSEL-16, or whatever you used to start /gno.boot/kern) by typing “exit” at the prompt. To startup up your new version of GNO, you should then launch /gno/kern. You will then see a “login:” prompt. Enter “root” as the user name; you will not yet need a password.

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