Re.
----
Oh, and one stupid new user question. I'm trying to get my swap partition
recognized, but it ain't working.  swapon -a reports /dev/sd0b: Device
not configured (using dd to read /dev/sd0b works fine, it's about 20Meg
in size). I haven't found anything like mkswap which is used under linux
to prepare a swap partition or file.  What am I missing?
----

A while ago FreeBSD started requiring you have an explicit name in 
disklabel for swap, probably NetBSD does too, looking on my 486 FreeBSD I see:

disklabel /dev/rsd0d
#        size   offset    fstype   [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
  a:   102400   102432    4.2BSD     1024  8192     0   # (Cyl.   97*- 195*)
  b:    67584   204832      swap                        # (Cyl.  195*- 259*)
  c:  1197408   102432    unused        0     0         # (Cyl.   97*- 1237*)
  d:  1299840        0    unused        0     0         # (Cyl.    0 - 1237*)

Looking at my 486 FreeNSD /etc/disktab (my 486 is master machine for many
of my pc532 files), I have
pc532_80m|julian_pc532_netbsd|Seagate ST-1096N:                         \
        :dt=SCSI:       :ty=winchester:                                 \
        :se#512:        :nt#7:          :nc#910:        :ns#26:         \
        :pc#163986:         :oc#0:                                      \
        :pd#163986:         :od#0:                                      \
           :pe#100:         :oe#0:                                      \
          :pf#2900:       :of#100:      :tf=boot:                       \
          :pg#4000:      :og#3000:                                      \
         :pa#20000:      :oa#7000:      :ta=4.2BSD:     :ba#8192: :fa#1024: \
         :pb#16384:     :ob#27000:      :tb=swap:                       \
        :ph#120602:     :oh#43384:      :th=4.2BSD:     :bh#8192: :fh#1024:

Good Luck 
Julian Stacey	jhs@freebsd.org