Hi folks,
After lurking on this list for over two years, I finally took the
plunge and tried installing RiscBSD - from the 1.3 alpha CDROM.  But I
have a problem, which I hope this august gathering of gentlefolk can
help me fix.

Of the rival sets of installation instructions, I principally followed
install.cdrom, and have got as far as installing a number of sets
(base etc misc kernels (RISCPC) local bash joe x11base xarm33 x11fonts
fvwm x11man man text config) and running Configure.  I have not edited
/etc/rc.conf (no editor working yet!).

The problem seems to be that when I now boot with a native kernel,
only the root partition is mounted.  The last console messages are as
follows:

boot device: wd0
root on wd0a dumps on wd0b
inttodd ...
Clock ...
root file system type: ffs

swapctl: adding /dev/wd0b as swap device at priority 0
Automatic boot in progress: starting file system checks
/dev/rwd0a: file system is clean, not checking
/dev/rwd0e: file system is clean, not checking
/dev/rwd0f: file system is clean, not checking  [1]
/etc/rc.conf is not configured.  Multiuser boot aborted.
Enter pathname of shell or RETURN for sh: 

[1] I added an extra partition, but this shouldn't be a problem,
should it?

If I try to run vi after mounting /usr by hand, it says:
ex/vi: Error: unknown: No such file or directory
Actually, thinking about it now, perhaps this is an un-/wrongly set
TERM environment variable it's complaining about?

Other information which may be helpful:

# mount
/dev/wd0a on / type ffs (local)
# cat /etc/fstab
/dev/wd0a / ffs rw 1 1
/dev/wd0b none swap sw 0 0
/dev/wd0e /usr ffs rw 1 2
/dev/wd0f /work ffs rw 1 3

Hardware: RiscPC, RO3.70, SA110, 32Mb DRAM, 2Mb VRAM, using 2.6Gb
Fujitsu MPA3026ATU as master on standard IDE interface, also Oak SCSI.

Wetware: professional programmer, 7 years' experience as UNIX user
(SunOS); none as system administrator.

Perhaps someone can suggest where to go from here?

Regards,
-- 
Colin Hogben
P.S. Be nice to me, it's my birthday :-)