The first version of NetBSD (0.8) dates back to 1993 and springs from the 4.3BSD Lite operating system, a version of Unix developed at the University of California, Berkeley (BSD = Berkeley Software Distribution), and from the 386BSD system, the first BSD port to the Intel 386 CPU. In the following years, modifications from the 4.4BSD Lite release (the last release from the Berkeley group) were integrated into the system. The BSD branch of Unix has had a great importance and influence on the history of Unix-like operating systems, to which it has contributed many tools, ideas and improvements which are now standard: the vi editor, the C shell, job control, the Berkeley fast file system, reliable signals, support for virtual memory and TCP/IP, just to name a few. This tradition of research and development survives today in the BSD systems and, in particular, in NetBSD.

NetBSD operates on a vast range of hardware platforms and is very portable. The full source to the NetBSD kernel and userland is available for all the supported platforms; please see the details on the official site of the NetBSD Project.

A detailed list of NetBSD features can be found at: http://www.NetBSD.org/about/features.html.

The basic features of NetBSD are:

These characteristics bring also indirect advantages. For example, if you work on just one platform you could think that you're not interested in portability. But portability is tied to code quality; without a well written and well organized code base it would be impossible to support a large number of platforms. And code quality is the base of any good and solid software system, though surprisingly few people seem to understand it.

One of the key characteristics of NetBSD is that its developers are not satisfied with partial implementations. Some systems seem to have the philosophy of “If it works, it's right”. In that light NetBSD's philosophy could be described as “It doesn't work unless it's right”. Think about how many overgrown programs are collapsing under their own weight and “features” and you'll understand why NetBSD tries to avoid this situation at all costs.

NetBSD supports many platforms, including the popular PC platform (i386 and amd64), SPARC and UltraSPARC, Alpha, Amiga, Atari, and m68k and PowerPC based Apple Macintosh machines. Technical details for all of them can be found on the NetBSD site.

The NetBSD site states that: “The NetBSD Project provides a freely available and redistributable system that professionals, hobbyists, and researchers can use in whatever manner they wish”. It is also an ideal system if you want to learn Unix, mainly because of its adherence to standards (one of the project goals) and because it works equally well on the latest PC hardware as well as on hardware which is considered obsolete by many other operating systems. To learn and use Unix you don't need to buy expensive hardware; you can use that old PC or Mac in your attic. It is important to note that although NetBSD runs on old hardware, modern hardware is well supported and care has been taken to ensure that supporting old machines does not inhibit performance on modern hardware. In addition, if you need a Unix system which runs consistently on a variety of platforms, NetBSD is probably your best choice.

Aside from the standard Unix productivity tools, editors, formatters, C/C++ compilers and debuggers and so on that are included with the base system, there is a huge collection of packages (currently over 8,000) that can be installed both from source and in pre-compiled form. All the packages that you expect to find on a well configured system are available for NetBSD for free. The framework that makes this possible, pkgsrc, also includes a number of commercial applications. In addition, NetBSD provides binary emulation for various other *nix operating systems, allowing you to run non-native applications. Linux emulation is probably the most relevant example. You can run the Linux versions of

NetBSD is an Open Source operating system, and as such it is freely available for download from ftp.NetBSD.org and its mirrors.

There is no “official” supplier of NetBSD CD-ROMs but there are various resellers. You can find the most up to date list on the relevant page on the NetBSD site.

This is the checklist about the things that should be clear and on-hand now:

This chapter will guide you through the installation process. The concepts presented here apply to all installation methods. The only difference is in the way the distribution sets are fetched by the installer. Some details of the installation differ depending on the NetBSD release: The examples from this chapter were created with NetBSD 5.0.

The installation process is divided logically in two parts. In the first part you create a partition for NetBSD and write the disklabel for that partition. In the second part you decide which distribution sets (subsets of the operating system) you want to install and then extract the files into the newly created partition(s).

The NetBSD install program sysinst allows you to change the keyboard layout during the installation. If for some reason this does not work for you, you can use the map in the following table.

To start the installation of NetBSD, insert your chosen boot media (CD/DVD, USB drive, floppy, etc.) and reboot the computer. The kernel on the installation medium will be booted and start displaying a lot of messages on the screen about hardware being detected.

Figure 3.1. Selecting the language

When the kernel has booted you will find yourself in the NetBSD installation program, sysinst, shown in Figure 3.1, “Selecting the language”. From here on you should follow the instructions displayed on the screen, using the INSTALL document as a companion reference. You will find the INSTALL document in various formats in the root directory of the NetBSD release. The sysinst screens all have more or less the same layout: the upper part of the screen shows a short description of the current operation or a short help message, and the rest of the screen is made up of interactive menus and prompts. To make a choice, use the cursor keys, the “Ctrl+N” (next) and “Ctrl+P” (previous) keys, or press one of the letters displayed left of each choice. Confirm your choice by pressing the Return key.

Start by selecting the language you prefer to use for the installation process.

The next screen Figure 3.2, “Selecting a keyboard type” will allow you to select a suitable keyboard type.

Figure 3.2. Selecting a keyboard type

This will bring you to the main menu of the installation program (Figure 3.3, “The sysinst main menu”).

Figure 3.3. The sysinst main menu

Choosing the “Install NetBSD to hard disk” option brings you to the next screen (Figure 3.4, “Confirming to install NetBSD”), where you need to confirm that you want to continue the installation.

Figure 3.4. Confirming to install NetBSD

After choosing “Yes” to continue, sysinst displays a list of one or more disks and asks which one you want to install NetBSD on. In the example given in Figure 3.5, “Choosing a hard disk”, there are two disks, and NetBSD will be installed on “wd0”, the first IDE disk found. If you use SCSI or external USB disks, the first will be named “sd0”, the second “sd1” and so on.

Figure 3.5. Choosing a hard disk

The installer will then ask whether you want to do a full, minimal or custom installation. NetBSD is broken into a collection of distributions sets. “Full installation” is the default and will install all sets; “Minimal installation” will only install a small core set, the minimum of what is needed for a working system. If you select “Custom installation” you can select which sets you would like to have installed. This step is shown in Figure 3.6, “Full or custom installation”.

Figure 3.6. Full or custom installation

If you choose to do a custom installation, sysinst will allow you to choose which distribution sets to install, as shown in Figure 3.7, “Selecting distribution sets”. At a minimum, you must select a kernel and the “Base” and “System (/etc)” sets.

Figure 3.7. Selecting distribution sets

The first important step of the installation has come: the partitioning of the hard disk. First, you need to specify whether NetBSD will use a partition (suggested choice) or the whole disk. In the former case it is still possible to create a partition that uses the whole hard disk (Figure 3.8, “Choosing the partitioning scheme”) so we recommend that you select this option as it keeps the BIOS partition table in a format which is compatible with other operating systems.

Figure 3.8. Choosing the partitioning scheme

The next screen shows the current state of the MBR partition table on the hard disk before the installation of NetBSD. There are four primary partitions, and as you can see, this example disk is currently empty. If you do have other partitions you can leave them around and install NetBSD on a partition that is currently unused, or you can overwrite a partition to use it for NetBSD.

Figure 3.9. fdisk

Deleting a partition is simple: after selecting the partition, a menu with options for that partition will appear (Figure 3.10, “Partition options”). Change the partition kind to “Delete partition” to remove the partition. Of course, if you want to use the partition for NetBSD you can set the partition kind to “NetBSD”.

You can create a partition for NetBSD by selecting the partition you want to install NetBSD to. The partition names “a” to “d” correspond to the four primary partitions on other operating systems. After selecting a partition, a menu with options for that partition will appear, as shown in Figure 3.10, “Partition options”.

Figure 3.10. Partition options

To create a new partition, the following information must be supplied:

Choose the partition type “NetBSD” for the new partition (using the “type” option). The installation program will try to guess the “start” position based on the end of the preceding partition. Change this value if necessary. The same thing applies to the “size” option; the installation program will try to fill in the space that is available until the next partition or the end of the disk (depending on which comes first). You can change this value if it is incorrect, or if you do not want NetBSD to use the suggested amount of space.

After you have chosen the partition type, start position, and size, it is a good idea to set the name that should be used in the boot menu. You can do this by selecting the “bootmenu” option and providing a label, e.g., “NetBSD”. It is a good idea to repeat this step for other bootable partitions so you can boot both NetBSD and a Windows system (or other operating systems) using the NetBSD bootselector. If you are satisfied with the partition options, confirm your choice by selecting “Partition OK”. Choose “Partition table OK” to leave the MBR partition table editor.

If you have made an error in partitioning (for example you have created overlapping partitions) sysinst will display a message and suggest that you go back to the MRB partition editor (but you are also allowed to continue). If the data is correct but the NetBSD partition lies outside the range of sectors which is bootable by the BIOS, sysinst will warn you and ask if you want to proceed anyway. Doing so may lead to problems on older PCs.

Next, sysinst will offer to install a boot selector on the hard disk. This screen is shown in Figure 3.11, “Installing the boot selector”.

Figure 3.11. Installing the boot selector

At this point, the BIOS partitions (called slices on BSD systems) have been created. They are also called PC BIOS partitions, MBR partitions or fdisk partitions.

Some platforms, like PC systems (amd64 and i386), use DOS-style MBR partitions to separate file systems. The MBR partition you created earlier in the installation process is necessary to make sure that other operating systems do not overwrite the diskspace that you allocated to NetBSD.

NetBSD uses its own partition scheme, called a disklabel, which is stored at the start of the MBR partition. In the next few steps you will create a disklabel(5) and set the sizes of the NetBSD partitions, or use existing partition sizes, as shown in Figure 3.12, “Edit partitions?”.

Figure 3.12. Edit partitions?

When you choose to set the sizes of the NetBSD partitions you can define the partitions you would like to create. The installation program will generate a disklabel based on these settings. This installation screen is shown in Figure 3.13, “Setting partition sizes”.

Figure 3.13. Setting partition sizes

The default partition scheme of just using a big / (root) file system (plus swap) works fine with NetBSD, and there is little need to change this. Figure 3.13, “Setting partition sizes” shows how to change the size of the swap partition to 600 MB. Changing /tmp to reside on a RAM disk (mfs(8)) for extra speed may be a good idea. Other partition schemes may use separate partitions for /var, /usr and/or /home, but you should use your own experience to decide if you need this.

The next step is to create the disklabel and edit its partitions, if necessary, using the disklabel editor (Figure 3.14, “The disklabel editor”). If you predefined the partition sizes in the previous step, the resulting disklabel will probably fit your wishes. In that case you can complete the process immediately by selecting “Partition sizes ok”.

Figure 3.14. The disklabel editor

There are two reserved partitions, “c”, representing the NetBSD partition, and “d”, representing the whole disk. You can edit all other partitions by using the cursor keys and pressing the return key. You can add a partition by selecting an unused slot and setting parameters for that partition. The partition editing screen is shown in Figure 3.15, “Disklabel partition editing”.

Figure 3.15. Disklabel partition editing

After defining the partitions in the new disklabel, the last item is to enter a name for the NetBSD disk as shown in Figure 3.16, “Naming the NetBSD disk”. This can be used later to distinguish between disklabels of otherwise identical disks.

Figure 3.16. Naming the NetBSD disk

The installer now has all the data it needs to prepare the disk. Nothing has been written to the disk at this point but, and now is your last chance to abort the installation process before actually writing data to the disk. Choose “no” to abort the installation process and return to the main menu, or continue by selecting “yes”.

Figure 3.17. Last chance to abort

After confirming that sysinst should prepare the disk, it will run disklabel(8) to create the NetBSD partition layout and newfs(8) to create the file systems on the disk.

After preparing the NetBSD partitions and their filesystems, the next question (shown in Figure 3.18, “Selecting bootblocks”) is which bootblocks to install. Usually you will choose the default of BIOS console, i.e., show boot messages on your computer's display.

If you run a farm of machines without monitor, it may be more convenient to use a serial console running on one of the serial ports. The menu also allows changing the serial port's baud rate from the default of 9600 baud, 8 data bits, no parity and one stopbit.

Figure 3.18. Selecting bootblocks

At this point, you have finished the first and most difficult part of the installation!

The second half of the installation process consists of populating the file systems by extracting the distribution sets that you selected earlier (base, compiler tools, games, etc). Before unpacking the sets, sysinst asks what information you would like to see during that process, as shown in Figure 3.19, “Choosing the verbosity of the extraction process”. You can choose between a progress bar, a display of the name of each extracted file, or nothing.

Figure 3.19. Choosing the verbosity of the extraction process

Now sysinst needs to find the NetBSD sets and you must tell it where to find them. The menu offers several choices, as shown in Figure 3.20, “Installation media”. The options are explained in detail in the INSTALL documents.

Figure 3.20. Installation media

3.10.1. Installing from CD-ROM or DVD

When selecting “CD-ROM / DVD”, sysinst asks the name of the CD-ROM or DVD device and the directory in which the set files are stored, see Figure 3.21, “CD-ROM/DVD installation”. The device is usually cd0 for the first CD-ROM or DVD drive, regardless of whether it is IDE or SCSI (or even USB or FireWire).

Figure 3.21. CD-ROM/DVD installation

The CD-ROM/DVD device name

If you don't know the name of the CD-ROM/DVD device, you can find by doing the following:

1. Press Ctrl-Z to pause sysinst and go to the shell prompt.

2. Type the command:

   # dmesg

   This will show the kernel startup messages, including the name of the CD-ROM device, for example cd0.

3. If the display scrolls too quickly, you can also use more:

   # dmesg | more

4. Go back to the installation program with the command:

   # fg

3.10.2. Installing from an unmounted file system

Figure 3.22, “Mounting a file system” shows the menu to install NetBSD from an unmounted file system. It is necessary to specify the device ("Device"), the file system of the device ("File system") and the path to the install sets ("Set directory"). The setting for the "Base directory" is optional and can be kept blank.

In the following example the install sets are stored on a MSDOS file system, on partition "e" on the device "sd0".

Figure 3.22. Mounting a file system

It is usually necessary to specify the device name and the partition. Figure 3.23, “Mounting a partition ” shows how to specify device "sd0" with partition "e".

Figure 3.23. Mounting a partition

In Figure 3.24, “Accessing a MSDOS file system” the file system type is specified. It is “msdos” but it could also be the NetBSD file system “ffs” or “ext2fs”, a Linux file system. The “Base directory” item is left blank and the binary sets are stored under “/sets”. Choosing “Continue” will start the extraction of the sets.

Figure 3.24. Accessing a MSDOS file system

3.10.3. Installing via FTP

If you choose to install from a local network or the Internet via FTP, sysinst will configure the system's network connection, download the selected set files to a temporary directory, and then extract them.

NetBSD currently supports installation via ethernet, USB ethernet or wireless, and wireless LAN. Installation via DSL (PPP over Ethernet) is not supported during installation.

The first step shown in Figure 3.25, “Which network interface to configure” consists of selecting which network card to configure. sysinst will determine a list of available network interfaces, present them and ask which one to use.

Note

The exact names of your network interfaces depend on the hardware you use. Example interfaces are “wm” for Intel Gigabit interfaces, “ne” for NE2000 and compatible ethernet cards, and “ath” for Atheros based wireless cards. This list is by no means complete, and NetBSD supports many more network devices.

To get a list of network interfaces available on your system, interrupt the installation process by pressing “Ctrl+Z”, then enter

# ifconfig -a
ne2: flags=8822<UP,BROADCAST,NOTRAILERS,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        address: 00:06:0d:c6:73:d5
        media: Ethernet autoselect 10baseT full-duplex
        status: active
        inet 0.0.0.0 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 0.0.0.0
        inet6 fe80::206:dff:fec6:73d5%ne2 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1
lo0: flags=8009<UP,LOOPBACK,MULTICAST> mtu 33196
        inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
        inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
        inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x2
ppp0: flags=8010<POINTOPOINT,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
ppp1: flags=8010<POINTOPOINT,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
sl0: flags=c010<POINTOPOINT,LINK2,MULTICAST> mtu 296
sl1: flags=c010<POINTOPOINT,LINK2,MULTICAST> mtu 296
strip0: flags=0 mtu 1100
strip1: flags=0 mtu 1100 

To get more information about all the devices found during system startup, including network devices, type

# dmesg | more

You can return to the NetBSD installation by typing

# fg

Figure 3.25. Which network interface to configure

Next, you have a chance to set your network medium.

Note

It is unlikely that you will need to enter anything other than the default here. If you experience problems like very slow transfers or timeouts, you may, for example, force different duplex settings for ethernet cards. To get a list of supported media and media options for a given network device (ne2, for example), escape from sysinst by pressing “Ctrl+Z”, then enter:

# ifconfig -m ne2
ne2: flags=8822<UP,BROADCAST,NOTRAILERS,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        address: 00:03:0d:c6:73:d5
        media: Ethernet 10baseT full-duplex
        status: active
        supported Ethernet media:
                media 10baseT
                media 10baseT mediaopt full-duplex
                media 10base2
                media autoselect

The various values printed after “media” may be of interest here, including keywords like “autoselect” but also including any “mediaopt” settings.

Return to the installation by typing:

# fg

The next question will be whether you want to perform DHCP autoconfiguration as shown in Figure 3.26, “Using DHCP for network configuration”. Answer “Yes” if you have a DHCP Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) running somewhere on your network, and sysinst will fetch a number of defaults from it. Answer “No” to enter all the values manually.

We will assume you answered “No” and go into all the questions asked in detail.

Figure 3.26. Using DHCP for network configuration

Figure 3.27, “Entering and configuring network data” shows the questions asked for the network configuration. The values to be entered are:

Your DNS Domain:

This is the name of the domain you are in.

Your hostname:

The name by which other machines can usually address your computer. Not used during installation.

Your IPv4 number:

Enter your numerical Internet Protocol address in “dotted quad” notation here, for example, 192.168.1.3

IPv4 Netmask:

The netmask for your network, either given as a hex value (“0xffffff00”) or in dotted-quad notation (“255.255.255.0”).

IPv4 gateway:

Your router's (or default gateway's) IP address. Do not use a hostname here!

IPv4 name server:

Your (first) DNS server's IP address. Again, don't use a hostname.

Figure 3.27. Entering and configuring network data

After answering all of your network configuration info, it will be displayed, and you will have a chance to go back and make changes (Figure 3.28, “Confirming network parameters”).

Figure 3.28. Confirming network parameters

sysinst will now run a few commands (not displayed in detail here) to configure the network: flushing the routing table, setting the default route, and testing if the network connection is operational.

Now that you have a functional network connection, you must tell the installer how to get the distribution sets, as shown in Figure 3.29, “Defining the FTP settings”.

When you are satisfied with your settings (the defaults work most of the time), choose “Get Distribution” to continue.

Figure 3.29. Defining the FTP settings

3.10.4. Installing via NFS

If you want to install NetBSD from a server in your local network, NFS is an alternative to FTP.

Note

Using this installation method requires the ability to set up an NFS server, a topic which is not discussed here.

As shown in Figure 3.30, “NFS install screen”, you must specify the IP address of the NFS server with "Host", the "Base directory" that is exported by the NFS server, and the "Set directory", which contains the install sets.

Figure 3.30. NFS install screen

Figure 3.31, “NFS example” shows an example: Host “192.168.1.50 ” is the NFS server that provides the directory “/home/username/Downloads” The NetBSD install sets are stored in the directory “/home/username/Downloads/sets” on the NFS server. Choose “Continue” to start the installation of the distribution sets.

Figure 3.31. NFS example

After the method for obtaining distribution sets has been chosen, and (if applicable) after those sets have been transferred, they will be extracted into the new NetBSD file system.

After extracting all selected sets, sysinst will create device nodes in the /dev directory and then display a message saying that everything went well.

Another message (see Figure 3.32, “Extraction of sets completed”) will let you know that the set extraction is now completed, and that you will have an opportunity to configure some essential things before finishing the NetBSD installation.

Figure 3.32. Extraction of sets completed

The first thing you can configure is your timezone. It is Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) by default, and you can use the two-level menu of continents/countries and cities shown in Figure 3.33, “Selecting the system's time zone” to select your timezone with the Return key. Next, press “x” followed by Return to exit timezone selection.

Figure 3.33. Selecting the system's time zone

At this point, you are given the option to choose a password encryption scheme. While “DES” is the standard algorithm used on most Unix systems, “MD5”, “Blowfish”, and “SHA1” allow longer passwords than DES, which only uses the first eight characters of the password that is entered. DES is still useful for interoperability with other operating systems.

Figure 3.34. Selecting a password encryption scheme

After choosing the password cipher you are asked if you want to set the root password. It is recommended to set a root password at this point for security reasons.

Figure 3.35. Set a root password?

When you agree to set a root password, sysinst will run the passwd(1) utility for you. Please note that the password is not echoed.

Figure 3.36. Setting root password

The next menu allows you to choose which command line interpreter - also known as a “shell” - will be used for the root account. The default is the classic Bourne shell, sh(1). Other choices are the Korn shell (ksh(1)) and the C shell (csh(1)). If, upon reading this, you don't have some idea of which shell you prefer, simply use the default, as this is a highly subjective decision. Should you later change your mind, root's shell can always be changed.

Figure 3.37. Choosing a shell

At this point the installation is finished.

Figure 3.38. Installation completed

After passing the dialog that confirms the installation, sysinst will return to the main menu. Remove any installation media (CD, floppy, etc.) and choose “Reboot the computer” to boot your new NetBSD installation.

Figure 3.39. Reboot to finish installation

This chapter describes the binary upgrade of a NetBSD system. To do the upgrade, you must have some form of bootable media (CD-ROM, USB drive, floppy, etc.) available and at least the base and kern distribution sets. Since files already installed on the system are overwritten in place, you only need additional free space for files which weren't previously installed or to account for growth of the sets between releases. Usually this is not more than a few megabytes.

The upgrade procedure is similar to an installation, but without the hard disk partitioning. sysinst will attempt to merge the settings stored in your /etc directory with the new version of NetBSD. Also, file systems are checked before unpacking the sets. Fetching the binary sets is done in the same manner as in the installation procedure.

Before doing an upgrade it is essential to read the release information and upgrading notes in one of the INSTALL files: this is the official description of the upgrade procedure, with platform specific information and important details. It can be found in the root directory of the NetBSD release (on the install CD or on the FTP server)

It is advisable to print the INSTALL document out. It is available in four formats: .txt, .ps, .more, and .html

The following section provides an overview of the binary upgrade process. Most of the following sysinst dialogs are similar to those of the installation process. More verbose descriptions and explanations of the dialogs are available in Chapter 3, Example installation.

After selecting the installation language and the keyboard type, the main menu appears. Choosing option “b: Upgrade NetBSD on a hard disk” will start the the upgrade process.

Figure 4.1. Starting the upgrade

The dialog in Figure 4.2, “Continuing the upgrade” will request permission to continue with the upgrade. At this point nothing has been changed yet and the upgrade can still be cancelled. This is a good time to ask yourself whether you have made a backup, and if you know for certain that you will be able to restore from it.

Figure 4.2. Continuing the upgrade

After choosing to continue with “Yes”, the next dialog will ask you to specify the hard disk with the NetBSD system that shall be upgraded. If more than one disk is available a list of the disks will be displayed.

Figure 4.3. Choosing the hard drive

The system used for the example has only one hard disk available: “wd0”.

The following dialog provides a menu to choose the installation type. The choices are “Full installation”, “Minimal installation”, or “Custom installation”.

Figure 4.4. Choosing the distribution filesets

At this point, sysinst will perform a check of the file system to ensure its integrity.

Figure 4.5. File system check

The next step is to choose which type of bootblocks to install.

Figure 4.6. Choosing bootblocks

The next dialog will ask how much information should be displayed during the extraction of the distribution sets.

Figure 4.7. Upgrade process - verbosity level

The following dialog asks for the install method of choice and provides a list of possible options. The install medium contains the new NetBSD distribution sets. You will be prompted for different information depending on which option you choose. For example, a CD-ROM or DVD install requires you to specify which device to use and which directory the sets are in, while an FTP install requires you to configure your network and specify the hostname of an FTP server. More details can be found in Section 3.10, “Choosing the installation media”.

Figure 4.8. Install medium

sysinst will now unpack the distribution sets, replacing your old binaries. After unpacking these sets, it runs the postinstall script to clean up various things. If no problems occur, you are done. If postinstall produces errors, you will have to manually resolve the issues it brings up. See postinstall's man page for more information. You should also read the remarks in INSTALL about upgrading, as specific compatibility issues are documented there.

Figure 4.9. Upgrade complete

When you are back at the main menu, remove the boot medium (if applicable) and reboot. Have fun with your new version of NetBSD!

If you have never used a Unix(-like) operating system before, your best friend is now the man command, which displays a manual page. The NetBSD manual pages are among the best and most detailed you can find, although they are very technical.

A good manual to read after booting a new NetBSD system is afterboot(8). It contains information about various necessary and useful configuration settings.

man name shows the man page of the “name” command and man -k name shows a list of man pages dealing with “name” (you can also use the apropos command).

To learn the basics of the man command, type:

# man man

Manual pages contain not only information about commands but also descriptions of some NetBSD features and structures. For example, take a look at the hier(7) man page, which describes in detail the layout of the filesystem used by NetBSD.

# man hier

Other similar pages are release(7) and pkgsrc(7).

# man 8 intro

Manual pages are divided in several sections, depending on what they document:

A subject may appear in more than one section of the manual; to view a specific page, supply the section number as an argument to the man command. For example, time appears in section 1 (the time user command) and in section 3 (the time function of the C library). To see the man page for the time C function, write:

# man 3 time

To see all the available pages:

# man -w time
# man -a time

Other than a shell, a text editor is the most essential tool for NetBSD system administration.

There are two provided in the base system

For the first login you will use the root user, which is the only user defined at the end of the installation. At the password prompt type the password for root that you set during the installation. If you didn't set a password, just press Enter.

NetBSD/i386 (Amnesiac) (ttyE0)
login: root
password:
We recommend creating a non-root account and using su(1) for 
root access.
#

If you did not set a password for root during the installation, you should use the /usr/bin/passwd command to do so now.

# /usr/bin/passwd
Changing local password for root.
New password:
Retype new password:

Passwords are not displayed on the screen while you type.

Choose a password that has numbers, digits, and special characters (not space) as well as from the upper and lower case alphabet. Do not choose any word in any language. It is common for an intruder to use dictionary attacks.

For security reasons, it is bad practice to login as root during regular use and maintenance of the system. Instead, administrators are encouraged to add a regular user, add the user to the wheel group, then use the su(1) command when root privileges are required. NetBSD offers the useradd(8) utility to create user accounts. For example, to create a new user:

# useradd -m joe

The defaults for the useradd command can be changed; see the useradd(8) man page.

User accounts that can su to root are required to be in the "wheel" group. This can be done when the account is created by specifying a secondary group:

# useradd -m -G wheel joe

As an alternative, the usermod(8) command can be used to add a user to an existing group:

# usermod -G wheel joe

In case you just created a user but forgot to set a password, you can still do that later using the passwd(1) command.

# passwd joe

Shadow passwords are enabled by default. What this means is that all the passwords in /etc/passwd are simply “*”; the encrypted passwords are stored in a file that can only be read by root, /etc/master.passwd. When you start vipw(8) to edit the password file, the program opens a copy of /etc/master.passwd; when you exit, vipw checks the validity of the copy, creates a new /etc/passwd and installs the new /etc/master.passwd file. Finally, vipw launches pwd_mkdb(8), which creates the files /etc/pwd.db and /etc/spwd.db, two databases which are equivalent to /etc/passwd and /etc/master.passwd but faster to process.

It is very important to always use vipw and the other tools for account administration (chfn(1), chsh(1), chpass(1), passwd(1)) and to never directly modify /etc/master.passwd or /etc/passwd.

If you do not have a US layout keyboard, you will probably want to change keymaps. For example, to use an italian keyboard, enter the following command:

# wsconsctl -k -w encoding=it
encoding -> it

To save the keyboard layout permanently, add the following line to the /etc/wscons.conf file:

encoding it

See Section 8.1.2.1, “Keyboard mappings” for a list of available keymaps.

NetBSD, like all Unix systems, uses a system clock based on Greenwich time (GMT) and this is what you should set your system clock to. If you want to keep the system clock set to the local time (because, for example, you have a dual boot system with Windows installed), you must notify NetBSD, adding rtclocaltime=YES to /etc/rc.conf:

# echo rtclocaltime=YES >> /etc/rc.conf
# sh /etc/rc.d/rtclocaltime restart

The number of minutes west of GMT is calculated automatically and is set in the kern.rtc_offset sysctl variable.

To display the current setting of the kern.rtc_offset variable:

# sysctl kern.rtc_offset
kern.rtc_offset = -60

This automatic configuration only works if you have set the proper time zone with a symbolic link to /etc/localtime. Normally this is done as part of the install procedure, but if for some reason it wasn't, you can set it by creating a symbolic link from a file in the /usr/share/zoneinfo directory to /etc/localtime.

The following example sets the time zone to Eastern Europe Summer Time:

# ln -fs /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Helsinki /etc/localtime

By default, all services are disabled in a fresh NetBSD installation, and ssh(1) is no exception. You may wish to enable it so you can log in to your system remotely. Set sshd=YES in /etc/rc.conf and then start the server with the command

# /etc/rc.d/sshd start

The first time the server is started, it will generate a new keypair, which will be stored inside the directory /etc/ssh.

NetBSD uses /etc/rc.conf to determine what will be executed when the system boots. Understanding this file is important. The rc.conf(5) manual page contains a detailed description of all available options.

The /etc/defaults/rc.conf file contains the default values for most settings. To override a default value, the new value must be put into /etc/rc.conf. The definitions there override the ones in /etc/defaults/rc.conf (which you should leave unchanged).

# man rc.conf

The first modifications are:

To resolve the names and IP addresses of remote hosts, the system needs access to a (remote or local) DNS nameserver. Tell the system which nameserver(s) to use by adding the IP address of one or more nameservers to the /etc/resolv.conf file, using the following as an example:

nameserver 145.253.2.75

To set the names of local hosts that are not available through DNS, edit the /etc/hosts file, which has the form:

IP-address  hostname  host

For example:

192.168.1.3 vigor3.your.domain vigor3

New users are often surprised by the fact that although the installation program recognized and mounted their CD-ROM perfectly, the installed system seems to have “forgotten” how to use the CD-ROM. There is no special magic for using a CD-ROM; you can mount it like any other file system. All you need to know is the device name and some options to the mount(8) command. You can find the device name with the aforementioned dmesg(8) command. For example, if dmesg displays:

# dmesg | grep ^cd
cd0 at atapibus0 drive 1: <ASUS CD-S400/A, , V2.1H> type 5 cdrom removable

the device name is cd0, and you can mount the CD-ROM with the following commands:

# mkdir /cdrom
# mount -t cd9660 -o ro /dev/cd0a /cdrom

To make things easier, you can add a line to the /etc/fstab file:

/dev/cd0a /cdrom cd9660 ro,noauto 0 0

Without the need to reboot, you can now mount the CD-ROM with:

# mount /cdrom

When the CD-ROM is mounted you can't eject it manually; you will have to unmount it before you can do that:

# umount /cdrom

There is also a software command which unmounts the CD-ROM and ejects it:

# eject /dev/cd0a

To mount a floppy you must know the name of the floppy device and the file system type of the floppy. Read the fdc(4) manpage for more information about device naming, as this will differ depending on the exact size and kind of your floppy disk. For example, to read and write a floppy in MS-DOS format you use the following command:

# mount -t msdos /dev/fd0a /mnt

Instead of /mnt, you can use another directory of your choice; you could, for example, create a /floppy directory like you did for the CD-ROM. If you do a lot of work with MS-DOS floppies, you will want to install the mtools package, which enables you to access a MS-DOS floppy (or hard disk partition) without the need to mount it. It is very handy for quickly copying a file to or from a floppy:

# mcopy foo bar a:
# mcopy a:baz.txt baz
# mcopy a:\*.jpg .

By the time that you have installed your system, it is quite likely that bugs in the release have been found. All significant and easily fixed problems will be reported at http://www.NetBSD.org/support/security/. It is recommended that you check this page regularly.

Use one of the following two shutdown commands to halt or reboot the system:

# shutdown -h now
# shutdown -r now

Two other commands to perform the same tasks are:

# halt
# reboot

halt, reboot and shutdown are not synonyms: the latter is more sophisticated. On a multiuser system you should really use shutdown, which allows you to schedule a shutdown time and notify users. It will also take care to stop processes properly. For more information, see the shutdown(8), halt(8) and reboot(8) manpages.

It is not like the vi editor needs introducing to seasoned UNIX users. The vi editor, originally developed by Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems, is an endlessly extensible, easy to use light ASCII editor and the bane of the newbie existence. This section will introduce the vi editor to the newbie and perhaps toss in a few ideas for the seasoned user as well.

The first half of this section will overview editing, saving, yanking/putting and navigating a file within a vi session. The second half will be a step by step sample vi session to help get started.

This is intended as a primer for using the vi editor, it is not by any means a thorough guide. It is meant to get the first time user up and using vi with enough skills to make changes to and create files.

$ vi filename

# vi foo.txt

This is some text

there we skipped a line
~
~
~
~

The standard editor supplied with NetBSD is, needless to say, vi, the most loved and hated editor in the world. If you don't use vi, skip this section, otherwise read it before installing other versions of vi. NetBSD's vi (nvi) was written by Keith Bostic of UCB to have a freely redistributable version of this editor and has many powerful extensions worth learning while being still very compatible with the original vi. Nvi has become the standard version of vi for BSD.

Amongst the most interesting extensions are:

set showmode ruler
set filec=^[
set cedit=^[

This topic is not directly related to NetBSD but it can be useful, for example, for examining the kernel sources.

When you examine a set of sources in a tree of directories and subdirectories you can simplify your work using the tag feature of vi. The method is the following:

The system startup files reside in the /etc directory. They are:

First, a look at controlling and supporting scripts (also documented in rc(8)).

Additional scripts outside of the rc.d directory:

rc.d scripts are controlled by a central configuration file, /etc/rc.conf, which loads its default settings from /etc/defaults/rc.conf. If you want to change a default setting, do not edit /etc/defaults/rc.conf; instead, override the setting in /etc/rc.conf.

It is a good idea to read the rc.conf(5) man page to learn about the services that are available to you.

The following example shows how to enable the SSH daemon, which is disabled by default:

# cd /etc; grep ssh defaults/rc.conf
sshd=NO                 sshd_flags=""
# echo "sshd=YES" >> rc.conf

Now sshd(8) will be started automatically at system startup. The next section describes how to start and stop services at any time.

Last but not least, files can be created in the /etc/rc.conf.d/ directory to override the behavior of a given rc.d script without editing the script itself.

The actual scripts that control services are in /etc/rc.d. These scripts are automatically run at boot time, but they can be called manually if necessary. The following example shows how to start the SSH daemon that we enabled in the previous section:

# /etc/rc.d/sshd start
Starting sshd.

Later, if you wish to stop the SSH daemon, run the following command:

# /etc/rc.d/sshd stop
Stopping sshd.
Waiting for PIDS: 123.

The rc.d scripts take one of the following arguments:

Some scripts may support other arguments (e.g., “reload”), but every script will support at least the above commands.

As an example, after adding a new record to a named(8) database, the daemon can be told to reload its configuration files with the following command:

# /etc/rc.d/named reload
Reloading named config files.

Note that all of the commands discussed above will only take action if the particular service is is enabled in /etc/rc.conf. It is possible to bypass this requirement by prepending “one” to the command, as in:

# /etc/rc.d/httpd onestart
Starting httpd.

The above command will allow you to start the httpd(8) service one time. To stop a service that has been started in this manner, pass “onestop” to the script.

The startup system of every Unix system determines, in one way or another, the order in which services are started. On some Unix systems this is done by numbering the files and/or putting them in separate run level directories. Solaris relies on wildcards like /etc/rc[23].d/S* being sorted numerically when expanded. Some simply put all the commands that should be started into a single monolithic script (this is the traditional BSD method, and is what NetBSD did before the rc.d system). On modern NetBSD this is done by the rc.d scripts and their contents. Please note that NetBSD does not have multiple runlevels as found in SysV-style systems like Solaris and Linux.

At the beginning of each rc.d script there is a series of commented out lines that have one of the following items in them:

These describe the dependencies of that particular script and allow rcorder to easily work either “up” or “down” as the situation requires. As an example, here is the ordering information contained in /etc/rc.d/nfsd:

...
 PROVIDE: nfsd
 REQUIRE: rpcbind mountd
...

Here we can see that this script provides the “nfsd” service and that it requires “rpcbind” and “mountd” to be running first. The