Updated (2021-12-14): When I installed NetBSD for the first time, I remember I’d to collect bits and pieces of information from different places, some of which were rather old and outdated. So, I’ve decided to write this stuff down and publish it here. Hope that it helps anyone looking to install and configure NetBSD as a laptop/desktop daily driver, if it helps one single soul, I’d be happy! I'll try to keep this updated on a regular basis. I got this 2014 laptop* without a hard drive, but with 8GB of RAM. How large should the hard drive be? Looking on the web and asking a few questions, I concluded that NetBSD wouldn’t require that much for a full install. So I bought a 30GB SSD for $20 and placed it in this laptop. Then, I installed NetBSD-9.2_STABLE from an usb, as described in, the guide . Choose keyboard -> Install to hard disk -> Full installation -> Use the entire disk, then set the sizes of the partitions, / 26GB swap 2GB if(window.hljsLoader && !document.currentScript.parentNode.hasAttribute('data-s9e-livepreview-onupdate')) { window.hljsLoader.highlightBlocks(document.currentScript.parentNode); } When the base install was finished, I let dhcp configure my network connection automatically, set the console keyboard, created a root password, set the root shell to /bin/ksh and configure the system to use the correct pkgin mirror . On this install, I’ve chosen not to set-up pkgsrc . Keep it simple to start with and, to be honest, I think a larger hard drive would be handy to build packages from source using pkgsrc , as the build directory needs some space to grow during the building process. Note: I'm currently building quite a few packages with pkgsrc and so far, so good. No issues with the disk size, just remember to always clean the build ( make clean , make clean-depends and make distclean ) before you start the next one 😉 I always choose to add a system user after installing, so that’s what I’ve done this time as well. After installing and rebooting the system, login as root and… # pkgin install doas dbus spectrwm slock firefox vim scrot xpdf-4 gtar xz montserrat git-base desktop-file-utils feh mozilla-rootcerts-openssl featherpad qt5ct redshift For my needs, I also install hunspell-sv_SE , but your needs may be slightly different 😉 I use spectrwm , but obviously, you can replace it with whatever wm you prefer. Note that, spectrwm needs a screenlock to function, therefore I'm pulling slock . Next copy some start up files to /etc/rc.d # cp /usr/pkg/share/examples/rc.d/dbus /etc/rc.d/ if(window.hljsLoader && !document.currentScript.parentNode.hasAttribute('data-s9e-livepreview-onupdate')) { window.hljsLoader.highlightBlocks(document.currentScript.parentNode); } Add these to /etc/rc.conf with the following: rpcbind=YES dbus=YES if(window.hljsLoader && !document.currentScript.parentNode.hasAttribute('data-s9e-livepreview-onupdate')) { window.hljsLoader.highlightBlocks(document.currentScript.parentNode); } If, like me, you have an Intel processor and would like to have the intel-microcode updated, remember Meltdown and Spectre?! Install the intel-microcode package, # pkgin install intel-microcode-netbsd copy the start-up script to /etc/rc.d # cp /usr/pkg/share/examples/rc.d/intel-microcode /etc/rc.d/ add microcode=YES to your rc.conf and reboot. Once again, login as root and add an user # useradd -g wheel -G users -s /bin/ksh -c "your real name" -m user_name # passwd user_name if(window.hljsLoader && !document.currentScript.parentNode.hasAttribute('data-s9e-livepreview-onupdate')) { window.hljsLoader.highlightBlocks(document.currentScript.parentNode); } Make sure your user_name has been added to wheel (check /etc/group ). If not, add it now. Create the /usr/pkg/etc/doas.conf file according to your needs. Here's mine as an example, #doas.conf permit :wheel permit nopass user_name cmd reboot permit nopass user_name cmd shutdown if(window.hljsLoader && !document.currentScript.parentNode.hasAttribute('data-s9e-livepreview-onupdate')) { window.hljsLoader.highlightBlocks(document.currentScript.parentNode); } Reboot, login as the new user and configure your stuff, things like .xinitrc , .shrc , .Xresources , ... Next time you login, you can issue startx to launch the graphical environment on your install. For wireless configuration using dhcpcd and wpa_supplicant see this archived post by @JuvenalUrbino . Also, by the same author there are quite a few very interesting and valuable tutorials, among others on how to set-up a firewall and configuring external media automount . Visit the archive for further information. Enjoy NetBSD! *HP EliteBook 820 G1 $ sysctl hw.machine_arch hw.model hw.ncpu hw.usermem64 hw.machine_arch = x86_64 hw.model = Intel 686-class hw.ncpu = 4 hw.usermem64 = 8448819200 $ pcictl pci0 list 000:00:0: Intel Core 4G (mobile) Host Bridge, DRAM (host bridge, revision 0x0b) 000:02:0: Intel HD Graphics (GT2) (VGA display, revision 0x0b) 000:03:0: Intel Core 4G (mobile) Mini HD audio (mixed mode multimedia, revision 0x0b) 000:20:0: Intel Core 4G (mobile) USB xHCI (USB serial bus, xHCI, revision 0x04) 000:22:0: Intel Core 4G (mobile) MEI (miscellaneous communications, revision 0x04) 000:25:0: Intel I218-LM Ethernet Connection (ethernet network, revision 0x04) 000:27:0: Intel Core 4G (mobile) HD Audio (mixed mode multimedia, revision 0x04) 000:28:0: Intel Core 4G (mobile) PCIe (PCI bridge, revision 0xe4) 000:28:3: Intel Core 4G (mobile) PCIe (PCI bridge, revision 0xe4) 000:28:5: Intel Core 4G (mobile) PCIe (PCI bridge, revision 0xe4) 000:29:0: Intel Core 4G (mobile) USB EHCI (USB serial bus, EHCI, revision 0x04) 000:31:0: Intel Core 4G (mobile) LPC (ISA bridge, revision 0x04) 000:31:2: Intel Core 4G (mobile) SATA Controller (AHCI) (SATA mass storage, AHCI 1.0, revision 0x04) 000:31:3: Intel Core 4G (mobile) SMBus (SMBus serial bus, revision 0x04) 002:00:0: Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205 WiFi (miscellaneous network, revision 0x34) 003:00:0: Realtek Semiconductor RTS5227 PCI-E Card Reader (undefined, subclass 0x00, revision 0x01) if(window.hljsLoader && !document.currentScript.parentNode.hasAttribute('data-s9e-livepreview-onupdate')) { window.hljsLoader.highlightBlocks(document.currentScript.parentNode); }

Uh oh, this screenshot make me wana go home early and tinkering with my old Dell Vostro Laptop. Thanks man

Thank you very much for taking the time to write this out.

Guide updated according to my latest changes ?

Thanks @pin for this guide. I will not go through NetBSD yet because my Intel graphics card and my Broadcom wifi card are not yet well recognized.

ouaille_aime_scier Understand that, though its a bit strange... Intel graphics tend to be well supported, unless you have a very new machine. As for broadcom, it could be hit or miss. Although the latest stable release has support for quite a few of those, see https://www.netbsd.org/releases/formal-8/NetBSD-8.1.html

@pin I have an i915 graphics card which is recognized, but there are some windowing issues behind it (window of applications that hang at the top of the screen). The wifi card is a BCM4313 that is not yet on NetBSD (nor on FreeBSD which I actually use).

A small useful mod (if you work with NetBSD at night when your family is sleeping) is to turn off console beeps. You can do this in X by adding xset b off to your .xinitrc . More information here: https://wiki.netbsd.org/tutorials/how_to_turn_off_console_beep/

NetBSD - A little guide for newcomers

pfr

pin
I was only asking because you said you find sysinst "easier and safer". As opposed to what I wonder? remember I'm learning as I go here 😅

Maybe I will wait for 9.0_Stable as I'm not using this laptop to regularly.

As for my mounting error, perhaps I'll start a new thread for that so I can post logs etc. It's a bit over my head and as I mentioned, it's something i'll need to fix before I can attempt an upgrade.

pfr As for my mounting error, perhaps I'll start a new thread for that so I can post logs etc.

That's probably good so others can see it.

Although, when I think about it... you actually don't want the usb to be mounted when you use dd 😉

pfr

pin using dd?
I hadn't planned on using dd

pfr
Ok, you made me write a new walk through, see Upgrading NetBSD using sysinst 😉

pfr

pin 😁 Sorry about that!! But hey, isn't that what were here for!?

Just to give you a few words of encouragement, without your "little guide for newcomers" and your constant guidance throughout this thread I would not have been able to set up a working NetBSD installation on my laptop. I mean, maybe I could have done it eventually, but I'm certain I would have given up long ago and just installed Linux. So thank you!

One of the reasons I got sick of Archlinux was the relentless RTFM mentality which discourages new comers from asking questions. Yes, the manual's are usually very comprehensive. But they all assume some prior knowledge and for most NOOBS reading the manual often leaves you with more questions than answers.

Now that I know there are knowledgeable and helpful, and most of all enthusiastic and active users on this forum, I'm likely to ask more questions. Keep up the good work! 😃

pin
This looks very helpful, I will take the time to go through it on the weekend! Cheers

@pfr
Formatting a 16GB usb to FFSv2 on NetBSD, just follow Chapter 13.
Does this make any sense to you?? If not, don't worry, it will sooner or later 🙂

pin@mybox $ sysctl hw.disknames
hw.disknames = wd0 sd0
pin@mybox $ doas dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sd0 bs=1m count=1
Password:
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
1048576 bytes transferred in 0.689 secs (1521880 bytes/sec)
pin@mybox $ doas fdisk -au sd0
Password:
fdisk: primary partition table invalid, no magic in sector 0
fdisk: Cannot determine the number of heads
Disk: /dev/rsd0
NetBSD disklabel disk geometry:
cylinders: 14784, heads: 64, sectors/track: 32 (2048 sectors/cylinder)
total sectors: 30277632, bytes/sector: 512

BIOS disk geometry:
cylinders: 1023, heads: 255, sectors/track: 63 (16065 sectors/cylinder)
total sectors: 30277632

Partitions aligned to 16065 sector boundaries, offset 63

Do you want to change our idea of what BIOS thinks? [n] 

Partition table:
0: <UNUSED>
1: <UNUSED>
2: <UNUSED>
3: <UNUSED>
Bootselector disabled.
No active partition.
Drive serial number: 0 (0x00000000)
Which partition do you want to change?: [none] 0
The data for partition 0 is:
<UNUSED>
sysid: [0..255 default: 169] 
start: [0..1885cyl default: 63, 0cyl, 0MB] 
size: [0..1885cyl default: 30277569, 1885cyl, 14784MB] 
bootmenu: [] (space to clear) 

Partition table:
0: NetBSD (sysid 169)
    start 63, size 30277569 (14784 MB, Cyls 0-1884/177/21)
        PBR is not bootable: All bytes are identical (0x00)
1: <UNUSED>
2: <UNUSED>
3: <UNUSED>
Bootselector disabled.
No active partition.
Drive serial number: 0 (0x00000000)
Which partition do you want to change?: [none]
Do you want to change the active partition? [n]

We haven't written the MBR back to disk yet. This is your last chance.
Partition table:
0: NetBSD (sysid 169)
    start 63, size 30277569 (14784 MB, Cyls 0-1884/177/21)
        PBR is not bootable: All bytes are identical (0x00)
1: <UNUSED>
2: <UNUSED>
3: <UNUSED>
Bootselector disabled.
No active partition.
Drive serial number: 0 (0x00000000)
Should we write new partition table? [n] y

pin@mybox $ doas disklabel sd0
Password:
# /dev/rsd0:
type: SCSI
disk: DataTraveler 3.0
label: fictitious
flags: removable
bytes/sector: 512
sectors/track: 32
tracks/cylinder: 64
sectors/cylinder: 2048
cylinders: 14784
total sectors: 30277632
rpm: 3600
interleave: 1
trackskew: 0
cylinderskew: 0
headswitch: 0           # microseconds
track-to-track seek: 0  # microseconds
drivedata: 0 
5 partitions:
#        size    offset     fstype [fsize >
 c:  30277569        63     unused      0 >
 d:  30277632         0     unused      0 >
 e:  30277569        63     4.2BSD      0 >
disklabel: boot block size 0
disklabel: super block size 0

pin@mybox $ doas newfs -O 2 /dev/rsd0e
Password:
/dev/rsd0e: 14784.0MB (30277568 sectors) block size 16384, fragment size 2048
        using 80 cylinder groups of 184.81MB, 11828 blks, 22976 inodes.
super-block backups (for fsck_ffs -b #) at:
160, 378656, 757152, 1135648, 1514144, 1892640, 2271136, 2649632, 3028128,
..............................................................................
pin@mybox $ sysctl hw.disknames
hw.disknames = wd0 sd0
pin@mybox $ doas mount /dev/sd0e /home/pin/Extmedia/                                                                                                                   
Password:
pin@mybox $ df -h
Filesystem         Size       Used      Avail %Cap Mounted on
/dev/wd0a          2.8G       173M       2.5G   6% /
/dev/wd0f          1.9G        96M       1.7G   5% /var
/dev/wd0e           17G       5.2G        11G  32% /usr
/dev/wd0g          3.8G       113M       3.5G   3% /home
kernfs             1.0K       1.0K         0B 100% /kern
ptyfs              1.0K       1.0K         0B 100% /dev/pts
procfs             4.0K       4.0K         0B 100% /proc
tmpfs              1.9G         0B       1.9G   0% /var/shm
/dev/sd0e           14G       2.0K        13G   0% /home/pin/Extmedia
pin@mybox $ doas umount /dev/sd0e
Password:
pin@mybox $ df -h
Filesystem         Size       Used      Avail %Cap Mounted on
/dev/wd0a          2.8G       173M       2.5G   6% /
/dev/wd0f          1.9G        96M       1.7G   5% /var
/dev/wd0e           17G       5.2G        11G  32% /usr
/dev/wd0g          3.8G       113M       3.5G   3% /home
kernfs             1.0K       1.0K         0B 100% /kern
ptyfs              1.0K       1.0K         0B 100% /dev/pts
procfs             4.0K       4.0K         0B 100% /proc
tmpfs              1.9G         0B       1.9G   0% /var/shm

No errors on mounting or unmounting the drive. Obviously, if you want to share the drive with another machine running another OS you should not format it to FFSv2 😉
Check the output of fdisk -l for the options of file systems and man newfs for the flags and options before writing the partitions to disk.

pfr Now that I know there are knowledgeable...

Appearances can be deceptive 🤣

I was wondering if I should add a section on pitfalls and potential precautions when moving from one Quaternary release to the next. Would you find this useful?

Guide updated, prior to the release of 9.0, which should happen tomorrow 🙂
I've been running 9.0 since BETA and I'm expecting a few changes on the disk partition management.
If upgrading with sysinst its possible to keep the partitions as described in the text above.
Remember to use postinstall this time, after all it is an update across major versions. etcupdate is also recommended but, I didn't need it, just manually remove /etc/rc.d/dhclient and /etc/rc.d/isdnd as these are no longer available in 9.0. Finally, add nvmm to /etc/group by adding nvmm:*:34:root to the list.

boot.cfg is also seeing some changes but, nothing drastic. Looking forward to 9.0 🤣

pfr

@pin
I am wondering about disk encryption post install.. is this possible? I don't care about loosing anything, as long as the base system remains.
Otherwise, could you add something about adding full disk encryption during the install process?
Thanks 🙂

pfr Unfortunately, I can only point you to Chapter 14 or an article on the wiki as I've never (on NetBSD or anywhere else) use encryption.

JuvenalUrbino

pfr I am wondering about disk encryption post install.. is this possible? I don't care about loosing anything, as long as the base system remains.

you have /home or swap on separate partitions you can encrypt just those,otherwise no, a fresh reinstall is required as encrypting implies overwriting the disk.

pfr Otherwise, could you add something about adding full disk encryption during the install process?

On NetBSD it's technically possible, but still very hackish as no util with a good level of abstraction exists to automatize the process and nobody seems to care much about it; better just to stick to encrypted root 🙂

Fresh install of 9.0_STABLE, guide updated 😉

pfr

pin
I noticed you've changed you're partitioning to a simple large root partition and swap. I remember when I was installing NetBSD I pained over partition sizes for about a week before I settled on them. Why the change? & are you using pkgsrc?

pfr

Remind me how I set the hostname of my machine? I cant remember how I did it last time.

pfr its in this thread, https://www.unitedbsd.com/d/6-netbsd-a-little-guide-for-newcomers/72
The name should be the same as specified in etc/rc.conf

...
rc_configured=YES
hostname=mybox
random_file=/etc/entropy-file
...

The DNS name is the one you gave it during install.

pfr

cool. thanks.

However, yet another problem 😛
I copied your rc.conf and included npf=YES without having configured npf (I probably dont need it)
npf=YES is on line 35
On startup, before being able to login as my user or as root, i get:

/etc/rc.conf: 35: Syntax error: Unterminated quoted string Enter pathname of shell or RETURN for /bin/sh:

I tried hitting return (and entering /bin/ksh) but for both sh and ksh when I try to edit /etc/rc.conf with vi i get:

vi: warninig: TERM is not set vi: unknown: unknown terminal type

Have i borked it completely or is there a way to come back from this?

pfr Man, ...you should be more careful 😆
Yes, there's a way out of it... check section 5.1.2. 😅

pfr

pin
I know! but I was anxious to get things up and running again so I rushed a little... 😅
i tried sed '35d' /etc/rc.conf but obviously hadn't mounted / so got a read only error.

Thanks, managed to mount / after exporting TERM=vt220 and edited the file in vi

Curiously, what is npf and wscons?

pfr Curiously, what is npf and wscons?

npf is NetBSD's firewall, http://rmind.github.io/npf/
(Thx to @JuvenalUrbino for providing me with a personal config 🤗 )

wscons are NetBSD's console drivers, https://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-cons.html

pfr

pin
Yeah, I realised I needed wscons enabled pretty quick when i started getting tty errors

Is your config for npf pretty universal if I was to use it?

pfr Is your config for npf pretty universal if I was to use it?

Yes, its based on my request to @JuvenalUrbino of allow all outbound traffic and deny (nearly) all incoming, with the exceptions you can read on the config file itself.

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