If it's not on the above lists, there is no support for it in this release.

Getting the NetBSD System on to Useful Media

Installation is supported from several media types, including:

• Tape
• NFS
• CD-ROM
• FTP

The procedure for transferring the distribution sets onto installation media depends on the type of media. Instructions for each type of media are given below.

In order to create installation media, you will need all the files and subdirectories in these two directories:

       .../NetBSD-1.4.3/mvme68k/installation
       .../NetBSD-1.4.3/mvme68k/binary

Creating boot/install tapes:

The boot tape is created as follows:

       cd .../NetBSD-1.4.3/mvme68k/installation
       set T = /dev/nrst0
       mt -f $T rewind
       dd if=tapeimage/stboot of=$T
       dd if=tapeimage/bootst of=$T obs=8k conv=osync
       gzip -dc tapeimage/netbsd-rd.gz | dd of=$T obs=8k conv=osync
       gzip -dc miniroot/miniroot.gz | dd of=$T obs=8k conv=osync
       mt -f $T rewind

The installation set tape is created as follows:

       cd .../NetBSD-1.4.3/mvme68k/binary/sets
       set T = /dev/nrst0
       mt -f $T rewind
       foreach f (base etc comp games man misc text)
       gzip -d < $f.tgz | dd of=$T bs=8k
       end
       mt -f $T rewind

If the tape does not work as expected, you may need to explicitly set the EOF mark at the end of each tape segment. Consult the tape-related manual pages on the system where the tapes are created for more details.

Boot/Install from NFS server:

If you are using a NetBSD system as the boot-server, have a look at the diskless(8) manual page for guidelines on how to proceed with this. If the server runs another operating system, consult the documentation that came with it (i.e. add_client(8) on SunOS).

Booting an MVME147 from ethernet is not possible without first downloading a small bootstrap program (sboot) via RS232. See the section entitiled "Installing from NFS" for details on how to accomplish this.

sboot expects to be able to download a second stage bootstrap program via TFTP after having acquired its IP address through RARP It will look for a filename derived from the machine's IP address expressed in hexadecimal, with an extension of ".147". For example, an MVME147 with IP address 130.115.144.11 will make an TFTP request for `8273900B.147'. Normally, this file is just a symbolic link to the NetBSD/mvme68k "netboot" program, which should be located in a place where the TFTP daemon can find it (remember, many TFTP daemons run in a chroot'ed environment). The netboot program may be found in the install directory of this distribution.

The MVME167 boot ROM has code builtin to boot over ethernet from a TFTP server. You should configure it to download the same "netboot" program as is used for MVME147.

The netboot program will query a bootparamd server to find the NFS server address and path name for its root, and then load a kernel from that location. The server should have a copy of the netbsd-rd kernel in the root area for your client (no other files are needed in the client root, although it might be a convenient place to put the uncompressed miniroot image) and /etc/bootparams on the server should have an entry for your client and its root directory. Note that you should rename the netbsd-rd kernel to just 'netbsd' in the client's root directory before trying to netboot the client.

The client will need access to the miniroot image, which can be provided using NFS or remote shell. If using NFS, miniroot.gz should be expanded on the server, because doing so from the RAMDISK shell is not so easy. The unzipped miniroot takes about 6Mb of space.

If you will be installing NetBSD on several clients, it may be useful to know that you can use a single NFS root for all the clients as long as they only use the netbsd-rd kernel. There will be no conflict between clients because the RAM-disk kernel will not use the NFS root. No swap file is needed; the RAM-disk kernel does not use that either.

Install/Upgrade from CD-ROM:

Install/Upgrade via FTP:

This method, of course, requires network access to an FTP server. This might be a local system, or it might even be ftp.NetBSD.ORG itself. If you wish to use ftp.NetBSD.ORG as your FTP file server, you may want to keep the following information handy:

       IP Address: ftp.NetBSD.ORG
       Login: anonymous
       Password: your e-mail address
       Server path: /pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-1.4.3/mvme68k/binary

Note

If you're not using a nameserver duing installation, you might find 204.152.184.75 handy; it's the IP address of ftp.NetBSD.ORG as of January, 1999.

Preparing your System for NetBSD Installation

mvme68k machines usually need little or no preparation before installing NetBSD, other than the usual, well advised precaution of backing up all data on any attached storage devices.

The following instructions should make your machine "NetBSD Ready".

Power-up your MVME147 board. You should have the bug prompt:

     

COLD Start
     

Onboard  RAM start = $00000000,  stop = $007FFFFF
     

147-Bug>
     

     

MVME167 Debugger/Diagnostics Release Version 2.3 - 02/25/94
COLD Start
     

Local Memory Found =02000000 (&33554432)
     

MPU Clock Speed =33Mhz
     

167-Bug>
     

       1x7-Bug>time
       Sunday 12/21/31 16:25:14
       1x7-Bug>time
       Sunday 12/21/31 16:25:15
       1x7-Bug>

Note that NetBSD bases its year at 1968, and adds the year offset in the MVME1x7's real-time clock to get the current year. So the '31' here equates to 1999. You may have to adjust your clock using the 'set' command to comply with NetBSD 's requirements. Don't worry if the "Day of the week" is not correct, NetBSD doesn't use it. Motorola has acknowledged a year 2000 bug in some versions of the MVME147 whereby the day of the week doesn't get set correctly by the 147Bug PROM. does not affect NetBSD !

Also make sure that your board's ethernet address is initialised to the correct value. You'll find the address on a label on the inside of the MVME147's front panel, and on the VMEbus P2 connector of the MVME167. On the MVME147, enter the last five digits of the address using the 'lsad' command. On the MVME167, you should use the 'cnfg' command.

To install successfully to a local SCSI disk, you need to ensure that 1x7Bug is aware of what targets are connected to the SCSI bus. This can be done by issueing the following command:

       1x7-Bug> iot;t

At this point, 1x7Bug will scan for any attached SCSI devices. After a short delay, a list of SCSI devices will be displayed. 147Bug will ask if LUNs should be assigned from SCSI ids, to which you should answer Y. You should also answer Y when asked if the information is to be saved to NVRAM. 167Bug does not prompt for this information.

The following installation instructions will assume that your target SCSI disk drive appears at SCSI-id 0. If you have a tape drive, the instructions assume is is configured for SCSI-id 5. When the RAMDISK root boots, NetBSD will refer to these devices as 'sd0' and 'rst0' respectively. You may wish to note these down; you'll be using them a lot. :-)

Installing the NetBSD System

Installing NetBSD is a relatively complex process, but if you have this document in hand it should not be too difficult.

There are several ways to install NetBSD onto your disk. If your machine has a tape drive the easiest way is "Installing from tape" (details below). If your machine is on a network with a suitable NFS server, then "Installing from NFS" is the next best method. Otherwise, if you have another mvme68k machine running NetBSD you can initialize the disk on that machine and then move the disk.

Installing from tape:

       147-Bug> bo 5

       167-Bug> bo 0,50

As mentioned earlier, this assumes your tape is jumpered for SCSI-id 5.

As the tape loads (which may take 20 to 30 seconds), you will see a series of status messages. It may be useful if you can capture these messages to a file, or a scrollable xterm window. In particular, you should make a note of the lines which describe the geometry of the SCSI disks detected by NetBSD. They are of the form:

sd0 at scsibus0 targ 0 lun 0: <CDC, 94161-9, 2506> SCSI1 0/direct fixed
sd0: 148MB, 967 cyl, 9 head, 35 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 304605 sectors

The information of most interest is the number of sectors; here it's 304605. You will need this number when you come to create a disklabel for that drive.

RAM address from VMEbus = $00000000
     

Booting from: VME147, Controller 5, Device 0
Loading: Operating System
     

Volume: NBSD
     

IPL loaded at:  $003F0000
>> BSD MVME147 tapeboot [$Revision: 1.5.2.1 $]
578616+422344+55540+[46032+51284]=0x11a6e4
Start @ 0x8000 ...
Copyright (c) 1996, 1997 The NetBSD Foundation, Inc.  All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993
    The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.
     

NetBSD 1.3 (RAMDISK) #1: Sun Dec 21 16:19:04 GMT 1997
    steve@soapy.mctavish.demon.co.uk:/usr/src/sys/arch/mvme68k/compile/RAMDISK
Motorola MVME-147S: 25MHz MC68030 CPU+MMU, MC68882 FPU
real mem  = 7237632
avail mem = 6381568
using 88 buffers containing 360448 bytes of memory
mainbus0 (root)
pcc0 at mainbus0: Peripheral Channel Controller, rev 0, vecbase 0x40
clock0 at pcc0 offset 0x0 ipl 5: Mostek MK48T02, 2048 bytes of NVRAM
  .
  .
     

Note

The exact text of the messages will vary depending on which MVME147 or MVME167 variant you're using.

Finally, you will see the following "welcome" message:

        Welcome to the NetBSD/mvme68k RAMDISK root!
     

This environment is designed to do only four things:
  1:  Partititon your disk (use the command:  edlabel /dev/rsd0c)
  2:  Copy a miniroot image into the swap partition  (/dev/rsd0b)
  3:  Make that partition bootable (using 'installboot')
  4:  Reboot (using the swap partition, i.e. /dev/sd0b).
     

Copying the miniroot can be done several ways, allowing the source
of the miniroot image to be on any of these:
    boot tape,  NFS server, TFTP server, rsh server
     

The easiest is loading from tape, which is done as follows:
        mt -f /dev/nrst0 rewind
        mt -f /dev/nrst0 fsf 3
        dd bs=8k if=/dev/nrst0 of=/dev/rsd0b
(For help with other methods, please see the install notes.)
     

To reboot using the swap partition after running installboot, first
use "halt", then at the Bug monitor prompt use a command like:
          1x7Bug> bo 0,,b:
     

To view this message again, type:  cat /.welcome
ssh:

You must now create a disklabel on the disk you wish to use for the root filesystem. This will usually be sd0. The disklabel is used by NetBSD to identify the starting block and size of each partition on the disk.

Partitions are named sd0a, sd0b, sd0c etc, up to sd0h. The mvme68k port of NetBSD makes some assumptions about the first three partitions on a boot disk:

sd0a

The root filesystem.

sd0b

The swap partition.

sd0c

The whole disk. Also known as the raw partition.

The raw partition is special; NetBSD is able to use it even if the disk has no label. You should never create a filesystem on the Raw Partition, even on a non-boot disk.

It is good practice to put /usr on a different partition than / (sd0a). So, the first available partition for /usr is sd0d. Refer to the section entitled NetBSD System Requirements and Supported Devices for information on the recommended sizes of the /, /usr and swap partitions.

You are not required to define any partitions beyond sd0d, but if you have a large disk drive, you might want to create several other partitions for filesystems such as /home or /usr/src. Note that at this time you are only required to partition the root/boot disk; you will get the opportunity to partition any other disks in your system from the main miniroot installation program.

To create the disklabel and partitions, use the edlabel program, passing it the name of the Raw Partition of your root/boot disk.

       ssh: edlabel /dev/rsd0c
       edlabel menu:
       print - display the current disk label
       modify - prompt for changes to the label
       write - write the new label to disk
       quit - terminate program
       edlabel>

The program shows what commands it recognizes; print, modify, write and quit. It will accept the first letter of a command if you don't feel like typing each one in full.

To start creating the basic partitions, you should enter m (modify) at the edlabel prompt, then enter the letter corresponding to the first partition, a.
       edlabel> m

       modify subcommands:
       @: modify disk parameters
       a-h: modify partition
       s: standarize geometry
       q: quit this subcommand
       edlabel/modify> a
       a (root) 0 (0/00/00) 0 (0/00/00) unused
       start as <blkno> or <cyls/trks/sects>: 0
       length as <nblks> or <cyls/trks/sects>: 38000
       type: 4.2BSD
       edlabel/modify>

When you enter the start and length of a partition, you can use either blocks or cylinder/track/sector notation. If this is the first time you've partitioned a disk for NetBSD, it's probably easiest to use block notation. The above example creates partition 'a', starting at block zero and with a size of 38000 blocks. Note that the usual size of a block is 512 bytes, so this creates a 19Mb partition.

The 'type' of the partition should be "4.2BSD", otherwise you won't be able to create a filesystem on it.

Next, create a swap partition (b). Note that the minimum size of this swap partition should be 8Mb, otherwise you won't be able to use a miniroot to complete the NetBSD installation!

       edlabel/modify> b
       b (swap) 0 (0/00/00) 0 (0/00/00) unused
       start as <blkno> or <cyls/trks/sects>: 38000
       length as <nblks> or <cyls/trks/sects>: 32768
       type: swap
       edlabel/modify>

Here, we specify a value for 'start' such that the swap partition follows immediately after partition 'a', i.e. 38000. The length of the swap partition should be a multiple of the amount of RAM you have in your system. Here, I've chosen 32768, or 16Mb. The next available block on the drive is thus 38000 + 32768. We will use this to create partition 'd' for our /usr filesystem. (Note that for a busy system, or a system with more than 8Mb of RAM, you'll be better off with a 32 or 64Mb swap partition.)

       edlabel/modify> d
       d (user) 0 (0/00/00) 0 (0/00/00) unused
       start as <blkno> or <cyls/trks/sects>: 70768
       length as <nblks> or <cyls/trks/sects>: 233837
       type: 4.2BSD
       edlabel/modify> q
       edlabel>

As you can see, I've chosen to assign the remainder of the disk to /usr. Since there are 304605 sectors on the example disk (did you remember to note down the number of sectors on your disk during boot?), and partition d starts at sector 70768, a simple bit of arithmetic (304605 - 70768) gives d a size of 233837.

You now need to write this new disklabel, together with the partition details you've just entered, to disk. You might also try the 'p' command to view the partitions. Once written, you can quit back to ssh using 'q'.

       edlabel> p

     type_num: 4
     sub_type: 0
       type_name: SCSI disk
       pack_name: fictitious
    bytes/sector: 512
   sectors/track: 35
 tracks/cylinder: 9
       cylinders: 967
sectors/cylinder: 315
partition      start         (c/t/s)      nblks         (c/t/s)  type
     

 a (root)          0       (0/00/00)      38000     (120/05/25)* 4.2BSD
 b (swap)      38000     (120/05/25)*     32768     (104/00/08)* swap
 c (disk)          0       (0/00/00)     304605     (967/00/00)  unused
 d (user)      70768     (224/05/33)*    233837     (742/03/02)* 4.2BSD

Now that your disk's partitioned, you need to get the proper installation miniroot image onto it. The miniroot image is designed to be copied into the swap partition of your disk. This is a safe place which won't be overwritten by the installation procedure. From the ssh prompt, use the following commands to copy the miniroot image from tape to swap (b).

       ssh: mt -f /dev/nrst0 rewind
       ssh: mt -f /dev/nrst0 fsf 3
       ssh: dd bs=8k if=/dev/nrst0 of=/dev/rsd0b

The disk and the miniroot must now be made bootable using the installboot(8) command. To do this, issue the following commands:

       ssh: mount /dev/sd0b /mnt
       ssh: installboot /mnt/usr/mdec/bootsd /bootxx /dev/rsd0b
       ssh: umount /dev/sd0b

You can now shutdown the system.

       ssh: halt
       signal 15
       ssh: syncing disks... done
       unmounting /mnt (/dev/sd1b)...
       unmounting / (root_device)...
       halted

       147-Bug> reset
       Reset Local SCSI Bus [Y,N] N? y
       Automatic reset of known SCSI Buses on RESET [Y,N] Y?
       Cold/Warm Reset flag [C,W] = C?
       Execute Soft Reset [Y,N] N? y

Resetting the MVME167 board is very similar. You should now reboot from that just installed miniroot. See the section entitled "Booting the miniroot" for details.

Installing from NFS:

To get started on the MVME147, you need to download "sboot" into RAM (you will find sboot in the install directory of the mvme68k distribution). You can either do that through the console line or through a 2nd serial connection. For example, an MVME147 connected to a sun4/110 and accessed via tip(1) can be loaded as follows:

lo 0
~Ccat sboot
go 4000

Which will look like this:

       147-Bug> lo 0
       ~CLocal command? cat sboot

away for 11 seconds
       !

       147-Bug> g 4000
       Effective address: 00004000

       sboot: serial line bootstrap program (end = 6018)

       >>>

Now, if you want to do it through serial line 1, then connect serial line one to a machine. At the 147-Bug> prompt type tm 1 You should then login to the machine it is connected to. Then hit "^A" to escape to Bug. do lo 1;x=cat sboot ... then when that is done you can reconnect tm 1 and logout. Then do go 4000 and you've got the ">>> " prompt of sboot.

Once you've got the ">>> " prompt, you can boot the RAMDISK kernel from the server:

       >>> b

le0: ethernet address: 8:0:3e:20:cb:87
My ip address is: 192.168.1.4
Server ip address is: 192.168.1.1
4800
Download was a success!

See below for the next step in booting MVME147.

The MVME167 is able to download netboot directly using TFTP. To enable this, you must first configure the networking parameters on the board as described in the section entitled "Preparing your System for NetBSD Installation. On a properly configured MVME167, all you need to type is:

       167-Bug> nbo

For both boards, the boot messages are very similar:

Start @ 0x8000 ...
>> BSD MVME147 netboot (via sboot) [$Revision: 1.5.2.1 $]
device: le0 attached to 08:00:3e:20:cb:87
boot: client IP address: 192.168.1.4
boot: client name: soapy
root addr=192.168.1.1 path=/export/soapy
578616+422344+55540+[46032+51284]=0x11a6e4
Start @ 0x8000 ...
Copyright (c) 1996, 1997 The NetBSD Foundation, Inc.  All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993
     The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.
     

NetBSD 1.3 (RAMDISK) #1: Sun Dec 21 16:19:04 GMT 1997
    steve@soapy.mctavish.demon.co.uk:/usr/src/sys/arch/mvme68k/compile/RAMDISK
Motorola MVME-147S: 25MHz MC68030 CPU+MMU, MC68882 FPU
real mem  = 7237632
avail mem = 6381568
using 88 buffers containing 360448 bytes of memory
mainbus0 (root)
pcc0 at mainbus0: Peripheral Channel Controller, rev 0, vecbase 0x40
clock0 at pcc0 offset 0x0 ipl 5: Mostek MK48T02, 2048 bytes of NVRAM
  .
  .

After the boot program loads the RAMDISK kernel, you should see the welcome screen as shown in the "tape boot" section above.

You now need to create a disklabel with partition information on the SCSI disk on which you intend to create your root filesystem. Follow the instructions in the previous section entitled "Installing from tape" to do this. (But stop short of the part which describes how to copy the miniroot from tape.)

You must now configure the network interface before you can access the NFS server containing the miniroot image. For example the command:

       ssh: ifconfig le0 inet 192.168.1.4 up

will bring up the MVME147 network interface 'le0' with that address. The command:

       ssh: ifconfig ie0 inet 192.168.1.4 up

will bring up the MVME167 network interface 'ie0' with that address. The next step is to copy the miniroot from your server. This can be done using either NFS or remote shell. (In the examples that follow, the server has IP address 192.168.1.1) You may then need to add a default route if the server is on a different subnet:

       ssh: route add default 192.168.1.2 1

You can look at the route table using:

       ssh: route show

Now mount the NFS filesystem containing the miniroot image:

       ssh: mount -r 192.168.1.1:/export/soapy /mnt

The procedure is simpler if you have space for an expanded (not compressed) copy of the miniroot image. In that case:

       ssh: dd bs=8k if=/mnt/miniroot of=/dev/rsd0b

Otherwise, you will need to use "zcat" to expand the miniroot image while copying. This is tricky because the "ssh" program (small shell) does not handle sh(1) pipeline syntax. Instead, you first run the reader in the background with its input set to /dev/pipe and then run the other program in the foreground with its output to /dev/pipe. The result looks like this:

       ssh: run -bg dd obs=8k if=/dev/pipe of=/dev/rsd0b
       ssh: run -o /dev/pipe zcat /mnt/install/miniroot.gz

To load the miniroot using rsh to the server, you would use a pair of commands similar to the above. Here is another example:

       ssh: run -b dd obs=8k if=/dev/pipe of=/dev/rsd0b
       ssh: run -o /dev/pipe rsh 192.168.1.1 zcat miniroot.gz

You must now make the disk bootable. Refer to the previous section on installing from tape, where it describes how to run 'installboot'. This is immediately following the part which explains how to copy the miniroot from tape.

Booting the miniroot:

The corresponding 167Bug boot command is:
       167-Bug> bo 0,,,b:

The command line parameters above are:

0

controller (usually zero)

,, or ,,,

bug argument separators

b:

tell the bootstrap code to boot from partition b

You should see a bunch of boot messages, followed by messages from the miniroot kernel just as you did when the RAMDISK kernel booted.

You will then be prompted to enter the root device. Since the miniroot was booted from the swap partition, you should enter 'sd0b'. You will then be asked for the swap device and filesystem type. Just press return twice to accept the defaults. When asked to enter a terminal type, either accept the default, or use whatever the TERM environment variable is set to in the shell of your host system:

       boot device: sd0
       root device (default sd0a): sd0b
       dump device (default sd0b): (return)
       file system (default generic): (return)
       root on sd0b dumps on sd0b
       mountroot: trying ffs...
       root file system type: ffs
       init: copying out path `/sbin/init' 11
       erase ^H, werase ^W, kill ^U, intr ^C
       Terminal type? [vt100] return

Congratulations! The system should now be running the miniroot installation program.

Miniroot install program:

The miniroot's install program will:

• Allow you to place disklabels on additional disks. The disk we are installing on should already have been partitioned using the RAMDISK kernel.

  Note that partition sizes and offsets are expressed in sectors. When you fill out the disklabel, you will need to specify partition types and filesystem parameters. If you're unsure what the these values should be, use the following defaults:

  
         fstype: 4.2BSD
       fsize: 1024
       bsize: 4096
       cpg: 16
  

  If the partition will be a swap partition, use the following:

  
         fstype: swap
       fsize: 0 (or blank)
       bsize: 0 (or blank)
       cpg: 0 (or blank)
  

  Note that partition 'c' is special; it covers then entire disk and should not be assigned to a filesystem.

  The number of partitions is currently fixed at 8.

• Create filesystems on target partitions.

• Allow you to set up your system's network configuration. Remember to specify host names without the domain name appended to the end. For example use `foo' instead of `foo.bar.org'. If, during the process of configuring the network interfaces, you make a mistake, you will be able to re-configure that interface by simply selecting it for configuration again.

• Mount target filesystems. You will be given the opportunity to manually edit the resulting /etc/fstab.

• Extract binary sets from the media of your choice.

• Copy configuration information gathered during the installation process to your root filesystem.

• Make device nodes in your root filesystem.

• Copy a new kernel onto your root partition.

• Install a new boot block.

• Check your filesystems for integrity.

First-time installation on a system through a method other than the installation program is possible, but strongly discouraged.

Post installation steps

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 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 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(1). 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 <int>, 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(8). See resolv.conf(5) or named(8) for more information.

   Other files in /etc that are new to NetBSD 1.4 and may require modification or setting up include /etc/mailer.conf, /etc/nsswitch.conf and /etc/wscons.conf.

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(8) 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.

   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, almost all of which can run on NetBSD. Modifications are usually needed to when transferring programs between different Unix-like systems, so 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 They are typically extracted into /usr/pkgsrc (though other locations work fine), as with the command:
          cat pkgsrc.tar.gz | gunzip | (mkdir /usr/pkgsrc;
          cd /usr/pkgsrc; tar xpf - )
   After extracting, then see the README file in the extraction directory (e.g. /usr/pkgsrc/README) 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(1) 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 filename
     is likely to give you more information on these files.