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. 1. Configuring /etc/rc.conf If you haven't done any configuration of /etc/rc.conf, the system will drop you into single user mode on first reboot with the message /etc/rc.conf is not configured. Multiuser boot aborted. and 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 '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 /etc directory. Change to the /etc directory and take a look at the /etc/rc.conf file. Modify it to your tastes, making sure that you set "rc_configured=YES" so that your changes will be enabled and a multi-user boot can proceed. If your /usr directory is on a separate partition and you do not know how to use 'ed' or 'ex', you will have to mount your /usr partition to gain access to 'vi'. Do the following: mount /usr export TERM=vt220 If you have /var on a seperate partition, you need to repeat that step for it. After that, you can edit /etc/rc.conf with 'vi'. When you have finished, type 'exit' at the prompt to leave the single-user shell and continue with the multi-user boot. Other values that need to be set in /etc/rc.conf for a networked environment are `hostname' and possibly `defaultroute', furthermore add an ifconfig_int for your interface , along the lines of ifconfig_de0="inet 123.45.67.89 netmask 255.255.255.0" or, if you have myname.my.dom in /etc/hosts: ifconfig_de0="inet myname.my.dom netmask 255.255.255.0" To enable proper hostname resolution, you will also want to add an /etc/resolv.conf file or (if you are feeling a little more adventurous) run named. See resolv.conf(5) or named(8) for more information. 2. Logging in After reboot, you can log in as "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. 3. Adding accounts Use the `vipw' command to add accounts to your system, DO NOT edit /etc/passwd directly. See adduser(8) for more information on the process of how to add a new user to the system. 4. The X Window System If you have installed the X window system, look at the files in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/doc for information. On NetBSD/i386 and NetBSD/arm32, you will need to set up a configuration file, see /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XF86Config.eg for an example. See http://www.xfree86.org/ and the XFree86 manual page for more information. NetBSD/pmax _VER uses an X11R5 X server. These servers cannot read the compressed fonts which are shipped with standard X11R6 configurations. You must take post-installation steps to make the X11R5 server work with the fonts that are standard for X11R6.3. The distribution file /usr/X11R6/bin/README.pmax contains information on how to choose an Xserver and how to access compressed fonts via a font server or to decompress the X fonts after installation. Please follow the directions there. Don't forget to add /usr/X11R6/bin to your path in your shell's dot file so that you have access to the X binaries. 5. Installing 3rd party packages There is a lot of software freely available for Unix based systems, which usually runs on NetBSD, too, sometimes with some modifications. The NetBSD packages collection incorporates any such changes necessary to make that software run on NetBSD, 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. Precompiled binaries can be found at ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/ Package sources for compiling packages can be obtained by retrieving the file ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-current/tar_files/pkgsrc.tar.gz and extracting it into /usr/pkgsrc. See /usr/pkgsrc/README then for more information. 6. Misc - To adjust the system to your local timezone, point the /etc/localtime symlink to the appropriate file under /usr/share/zoneinfo. - Edit /etc/aliases to forward root mail to the right place (run `newaliases' afterwards) - The /etc/sendmail.cf file will almost definitely need to be adjusted; files aiding in this can be found in /usr/share/sendmail. See the README-file there for more information. - Edit /etc/rc.local to run any local daemons you use. - Many of the /etc files are documented in section 5 of the manual; so just invoking "man " is likely to give you more information on these files.