Ok, what you've told me makes sense.  Now I really feel dumb.  How do I set
the terminal if I'm using a local keyboard & monitor.  When I start vi right
now it gives me the following error message.  "term enviroment variable not
set"

Thanks for all the help,
Robert

-----Original Message-----
From: port-alpha-owner@netbsd.org [mailto:port-alpha-owner@netbsd.org]On
Behalf Of Dave McGuire
Sent: Saturday, July 27, 2002 9:52 PM
To: Robert Manna
Cc: port-alpha@netbsd.org
Subject: RE: boot problem


On July 27, Robert Manna wrote:
> I set the enviroment variable as specified and got the following results:
>
> "/etc/rc.conf is not configured. Multiuser boot aborted.
> Enter pathname of shell or RETURN for sh:"
>
> If I hit return I get the same message as before about creating a non-root
> account.  I presume this means I need to edit my rc.conf file.  However
none
> of the commands work.  I can't use vi to edit the file, I cannot even
access
> the man pages.  It simply returns command not found.

  Ahh, I've been in that spot.  When you get to the single-user mode
shell prompt (by hitting return at the "enter pathname of shell blah
blah" message), mount the filesystems so you can run the editor:

# mount -a

  You may need to set a TERM environment variable depending on what
type of console terminal you're using (keyboard and framebuffer, for
instance).  If you have a VT100-style serial terminal connected to the
machine as your console, you'd do this:

# TERM=vt100;export TERM

  Then you should be able to edit /etc/rc.conf to set up your system's
defaults, or at the very least just set "rc_configured" to "YES" to
get it to boot all the way up.

  This initial stuff can be confusing, and it's definitely a
pain...but this is stuff that you only have to go through once, then
you're home free.

      -Dave

--
Dave McGuire                  "Needing a calculator indicates that
St. Petersburg, FL              your .emacs file is incomplete." -Joshua
Boyd