I need feature X, but program Y says the operation is not permitted, or X is not supported.
Compile your kernel with support for X.
How do I compile a kernel?
Read the chapter on compiling a kernel that comes with The NetBSD Guide.
What is the difference between the netbsd-x-y and netbsd-x-y-RELEASE tags and so forth?
netbsd-x will track all netbsd-x-y-z until x bumps.
netbsd-x-y will track all netbsd-x-y-z until y bumps.
netbsd-x-y-z-RELEASE is that one special version, it will never change or
receive bugfixes.
What's the tag of netbsd-current?
Just don't specify any tag. If you want to upgrade to -current, use the option -A to cvs up. (But using cvsup with the "." option is recommended in that case anyway.)
When I boot my new kernel, everything crashes with «Illegal system call» or such
This means that either you're running a kernel that is too old to support your current userland: downgrade the userland before downgrading a kernel. The other possibility is that you upgraded your kernel and haven't specified the compatibility option for your version, this is lethal of course because you can compile your toolchain only after you booted your new kernel.
I have no backup of my old kernel, what can I do?
Learn from your mistakes, and extract kernel and/or userland from the installation CD.
What does this mean: «Internal compiler error: segmentation fault»
Your compiler crashed. You should try to run make again. If it does not
work, run make clean, and then run make again.
If this still doesn't work, watch out if make always fails at the same
file. If so, write a bug report to
the GCC team. If this is
not the case, it's likely that either your CPU, your memory or the
memory pipeline are broken. Run a memtester or something of the like,
if it shows errors, try to replace/remove memory, exchange CPU and
mainboard.
You suck.
Thank you, mate.