The setup script that comes on the floppy disks assumes that the target i386 is connected to the net and doing the sups from CMU directly. It assumes that it is running as root, so that the userids and groupids of the files are preserved. This is necessary for a dozen or so set[ug]id files in /bin and /etc. Setup also executes three commands during the sup of the first collection. If you want to sup to an intermediary machine you need to copy the sup commands from the setup script and execute them on the intermediary being careful to remove the e (execute) flag for the first collection. sup -dov PORTFILE first sup -dov PORTFILE bin.root sup -dov PORTFILE bin.usr PORTFILE looks as follows: You need to edit it to include your crypt and to change the base directory to the directory on the intermediary machine where you want the i386 binarires to be placed first host=x29.mach.cs.cmu.edu hostbase=/i386 base=/mnt/RFS/.LOCALROOT crypt=MacHToCMU bin.root host=x29.mach.cs.cmu.edu hostbase=/i386 base=/mnt/RFS/.LOCALROOT crypt=MacHTo.5 bin.usr host=x29.mach.cs.cmu.edu hostbase=/i386 base=/mnt/RFS/.LOCALROOT crypt=MacHTo.5 prefix=usr You should do the sup as root on the intermediary machine to preserve user and group ids. Next you need to do the first two steps of the setup command on the target i386 machine and then copy the binaries from the intermediary machine to the hard-disk /RFS/.LOCALROOT. Finally you need to execute the following three commands on the i386 execute cd dev; umask 0; tar xvf TARDEV execute dd if=boot.hd of=/dev/rhd0c or execute dd if=boot.sd of=/dev/rsd0c execute ln mach ../..; ln mach vmunix before you can boot off the hard disk.