h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"The point is that I don't understand how to use BSD! I managed to get X running but only with twm (yuk ), and I couldn't find out how to install more software"

NetBSD has a minimalist approach leaving the user to install the packages they need over and above a basic O/S. The user will do this using the Packages Collection (http://netbsd.org/Documentation/software/packages.html ). If you want detailed help on NetBSD try telnet://sdf.lonestar.org it is a public access UNIX system running on NetBSD, a trial account is free and you should be able to get detailed help on the bboard there. If you still cannot figure it out try FreeBSD, it is a lot more user friendly in terms of install & setting up.

From Quarterly Status Report: July - September 2004 (just got round to checking my e-mail)

pkgsrc:
=======

At the end of September, the NetBSD Packages collection contained 5018 packages. Since July 2004, 1014 packages were updated, 250 new packages added and 30 removed, leading to an overall increase of 220 packages in 3 months (73.3 packages added per month, or 2.4 new packages per day).

Some of the most visible additions and updates include gcc-3.4.2, gnome-2.8, kde-3.3.0, mozilla-1.7.3, suse91_* and the X.org based packages. In addition, the following items show some aspects of the activity related to the NetBSD Packages Collection since July 2004:

...

pkgsrc documentation moved to website [20040928]
- ------------------------------------------------

In an effort to avoid unneccesary duplication of documentation, the main pkgsrc documentation was finally moved into the htdocs module, making it available in full on the NetBSD website as the authoritative source. The existing XML documentation was updated by Hubert Feyrer (login: hubertf) and Grant Beattie (login: grant) and is available at
http://www.NetBSD.org/Documentation/pkgsrc/.

Hope that helps

Thanks for the info! I might try it again some time.

Good Luck

I've just had another go and pkg_add seems to be working! Although it did take me about ten minutes just to work out how to mount the CD.

The trouble is that I think I have installed a package (links) successfully, which I think must be run as a normal user (it doesn't work as root). When I installed NetBSD, I did create a normal user, but I seem to have forgotten/lost the password in the meantime. So I created a new user like this:

#useradd -m me

And then I did this:

#usermod -G wheel,users me

And when I try to login as 'me', it asks for a password, of which there is none, and then says 'login incorrect'. What am I doing wrong?

not sure, if you want I can repost your question on the Bulletin Board I mentioned in post 1 of this thread (unless you want to do it your self?)

You could - I don't know - I'd appreciate it. I don't have much time myself, but I wouldn't trouble yourself: I am happy to use my current Gentoo system for the while.

OK watch this space...

on a separate note good work on the three open source articles, given that it was my idea to have an "Open Source" collaborative topic of the week (F1789982?thread=405659 ) I'm glad someone is putting the material generated to good use

Thanks.

___
as root,
# passwd me
Then just type in a new password.
___


hope that works

Yes - that worked. Thanks.

I thought it was about time I made the WinXP portion of my hard drive available to NetBSD
I followed the instructions in the NetBSD Guide and just got thrown into single user mode on reboot...

A quick read of the fstab manual and the following mod to the fstab file worked (instead of the one suggested in the guide)...
/dev/wd0f /c ntfs ro 1 0

it is the zero at the end that seems to make the difference

WinXP? Out of interest, what do you use WinXP for? They are, of course, the extremes of security: NetBSD being the most secure OS in the world (along with all BSDs); Windows being the least.

Interesting problem there, but I shall steer clear of mounting Windows if I start using NetBSD. I have NetBSD on a different hard drive to Windows, myself. I actually sometimes get a bit frightened of Linux and Unix, after I accidentally corrupted the root password on Gentoo with a careless update of /etc config files.

But if I use Windows for anything, it's most enjoyable to delete files haphazardly, edit registry keys and deliberately cause crashes to see how it handles it just for the hell of it. But of course the real reason for my having Win is video editing and managing my Palm handheld - as soon as I find good alternatives on Linux I'll have even more fun in destroying Windows from my HDD forever!

Win XP it primarily used by the girly (still trying to convert her). The main reason for mounting it was to access to the MP3 collection, with Win XP deaf,dumb & blind to NetBSD the MP3's had to go on win partition so both me & girl can gain access.

I see.

Speaking of being deaf, dumb and blind to NetBSD, though, I once tried to install SuSE Linux next to NetBSD and it wouldn't install on the grounds that the NetBSD partition was of an unrecognised type. Also, the Fedora installer failed to find it too.

The Slackware and Gentoo installations were the best for partitioning schemes that cohabit NetBSD on a drive.

If you are into muli O/S-ing *nix systems have you taken a look at Xen?
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/
http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/xen/