Post Installation

You should set a password for the root account. Type:

passwd

Then enter the new password in the prompts (No characters or *'s will appear as you type your password but it IS being entered).

Unix systems always run the clock using UTC time (sometimes named as Greenwich time). You should adjust the timezone setting to have the dates shown by utilities to be like your wall clock. Type:

echo export TZ=Europe/Amsterdam > /etc/rc.timezone

or

echo export TZ=America/New_York > /etc/rc.timezone

The timezone will be set when you log in again.

Of course, you should adjust Europe/Amsterdam according to your location. You can look into the /usr/share/zoneinfo hierarchy to find the correct name. The general principle is continent/city or ocean/city, where city is the English name of the biggest city in the same timezone as you. The city would ideally be in your country, since timezone rules have a strong tendency to vary according to national rules.

Always logging in as root is usually a bad idea, so it is highly recommended to set up at least one other user as soon as possible. For directions on how to do that please see: Managing User Accounts

By default, MINIX runs a DHCP client at boot time, to request an IP address from your DHCP server.

In this case, typically you will not know what the IP address will be and so providing a host name for the system has no functional purpose. But, if you arrange for your DHCP server to always assign the same address to your MINIX system, based on the machine's MAC address, then naming the MINIX host has a real purpose, e.g., you can SSH to it from another machine on your network.

The same is true if you disable the running of the DHCP client at system initialization time and instead manually assign a static IP address (see boot(8) for more information). So if you know what the IP address will be and wish to assign a name to your MINIX host, enter the address/name pair into /etc/hosts (see hosts(5) for specific information about the format of that file).

Several keyboard layouts are available. These layouts are loaded from files called “keymaps.”

For example, here's how to enable the Swapped Caps & Ctrl U.S. keymap:

loadkeys /usr/lib/keymaps/us-swap.map

To make the keymap the default:

cp /usr/lib/keymaps/us-swap.map /etc/keymap

For details, see keymap(5). This contains the complete documentation on how to create and configure keymaps. The keymap source code is in /usr/src/drivers/tty/keymaps.

Many packages of third-party software are available for installation. These are also known as “binary packages,” because they often contain executable (binary) programs.

Some of the most commonly installed packages include:

• X11
• GCC and GNU Development Tools
• GNU Utilities
• Perl
• Python
• Tcl/Tk
• OpenSSH