Copyright (c) 1999 The NetBSD Foundation, Inc.
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Once you've got the operating system running, there are a few things you need to do in order to bring the system into a propperly configured state, with the most important ones described below. l -enum t Configuring
p If you haven't done any configuration of
a /etc/rc.conf , the system will drop you into single user mode on first reboot with the message .Dl /etc/rc.conf is not configured. Multiuser boot aborted. and with the root filesystem mounted read-write. When the system asks you to choose a shell, simply hit return to get to a prompt. If you are asked for a terminal type, respond with the correct terminal type as discussed in the .Sx Once you've booted the diskimage section. .\} c vt220 (or whatever is appropriate for your terminal type) .\} and hit return. At this point, you need to configure at least one file in the
a /etc No directory. Change to the
a /etc directory and take a look at the
a /etc/rc.conf file. Modify it to your tastes, making sure that you set .Li rc_configured=YES so that your changes will be enabled and a multi-user boot can proceed. If your
a /usr No directory is on a separate partition and you do not know how to use 'ed' or 'ex', you will have to mount your
a /usr partition to gain access to 'vi'. Do the following: .D1 Ic "mount /usr .D1 Ic "export TERM=termtype .\} .D1 Ic "mount /usr .D1 Ic "export TERM=vt220 .\} If you have
a /var on a seperate partition, you need to repeat that step for it. After that, you can edit
a /etc/rc.conf with .Xr vi 1 . When you have finished, type c exit at the prompt to leave the single-user shell and continue with the multi-user boot.
p Other values that need to be set in
a /etc/rc.conf for a networked environment are .Ar hostname No and possibly .Ar defaultroute , furthermore add an .Ar ifconfig_int for your interface .Aq int , along the lines of or, if you have .Ar myname.my.dom No in Pa /etc/hosts : To enable proper hostname resolution, you will also want to add an
a /etc/resolv.conf file or (if you are feeling a little more adventurous) run .Xr named 8 . See .Xr resolv.conf 5 or .Xr named 8 for more information.
p Other files in
a /etc that are new to NetBSD 1.4 and may require modification or setting up include
a /etc/mailer.conf ,
a /etc/nsswitch.conf and
a /etc/wscons.conf . t Logging in
p After reboot, you can log in as .Li root at the login prompt. There is no initial password, but if you're using the machine in a networked environment, you should create an account for yourself (see below) and protect it and the "root" account with good passwords. t Adding accounts
p Use the .Xr vipw 8 command to add accounts to your system, .Em do not No edit Pa /etc/passwd directly. See .Xr adduser 8 for more information on the process of how to add a new user to the system. t The X Window System
p If you have installed the X window system, look at the files in
a /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/doc for information.
p You will need to set up a configuration file, see
a /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config.eg for an example. See .Lk http://www.xfree86.org/ and the XFree86 manual page for more information. .\}
p Don't forget to add
a /usr/X11R6/bin to your path in your shell's dot file so that you have access to the X binaries. t Installing 3rd party packages
p There is a lot of software freely available for Unix-based systems, almost all of which can run on .Nx . Modifications are usually needed to when transferring programs between different Unix-like systems, so the .Nx packages collection incorporates any such changes necessary to make that software run on .Nx , and makes the installation (and deinstallation) of the software packages easy. There's also the option of building a package from source, in case there's no precompiled binary available.
p Precompiled binaries can be found at .Lk ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/ Package sources for compiling packages can be obtained by retrieving the file .Lk ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-current/tar_files/pkgsrc.tar.gz They are typically extracted into
a /usr/pkgsrc (though other locations work fine), as with the command: .D1 Ic "cat pkgsrc.tar.gz | gunzip | (mkdir /usr/pkgsrc; .D1 Ic "cd /usr/pkgsrc; tar xpf - ) After extracting, then see the
a README file in the extraction directory (e.g.
a /usr/pkgsrc/README ) for more information. t Misc l -bullet t To adjust the system to your local timezone, point the
a /etc/localtime symlink to the appropriate file under
a /usr/share/zoneinfo . t Edit
a /etc/aliases to forward root mail to the right place (run .Xr newaliases 1 afterwards.) t The
a /etc/sendmail.cf file will almost definitely need to be adjusted; files aiding in this can be found in
a /usr/share/sendmail . See the .Li Tn README file there for more information. t Edit
a /etc/rc.local to run any local daemons you use. t Many of the
a /etc files are documented in section 5 of the manual; so just invoking .D1 Ic man Ar filename is likely to give you more information on these files. .El .El
Indexes created Tue Oct 21 16:10:11 GMT 2025