I think there may be something seriously wrong with the binary meta
package of kde at ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/3.0/i386/All

I keep a close eye on how much bandwidth I use, as I pay per gigabyte,
and I can attribute ~700MB to my recent attempt to pkg_add kde. I know
it's a large beast and has many dependencies, but even after it failed
to install my /usr partition is still only 437MB.

I got the impression it wound up in a loop and kept retrieving the same
files. I'm lucky I didn't leave it running overnight as I sometimes do.

I don't have the full output of the run, but some errors were like:

pkg_add: no pkg found for 'qt3-libs-3.3.6nb1', sorry.
pkg_add: 1 package addition failed
pkg_add: autoload of dependency `qt3-libs>=3.3.6nb1' failed!

And similar failures for the following:

arts-1.5.3nb1, kdelibs-3.5.3, kdelibs-3.5.3{,nb[0-9]*}
kdebase-3.5.3nb1, kdebase>=3.5.2nb2, kdeaccessibility-3.5.3
kdeaccessibility-3.5.3{,nb[0-9]*}, kdeartwork-3.5.3'
kdeartwork-3.5.3{,nb[0-9]*}

I eventually hit ^c after seeing the same failures repeated many times.

pkg_info shows these were installed:
xdg-dirs-1.3, perl-5.8.8nb2, freetype2-2.2.1nb2,
expat-2.0.0nb1, fontconfig-2.3.2nb3, Xrender-0.9.0nb1,
Xft2-2.1.7nb2, MesaLib-6.4.2nb1, glu-6.4.2, jpeg-6bnb3,
tiff-3.8.2nb3, lcms-1.15nb2, mng-1.0.9nb1, png-1.2.12,
Xrandr-1.0.2nb3, Xfixes-2.0.1nb3, xcursor-1.1.2nb2, pcre-6.6,
libaudiofile-0.2.6nb1, esound-0.2.36, libmad-0.15.1bnb1,
libogg-1.1.3, libvorbis-1.1.2, glib2-2.10.3, libidn-0.6.3,
jasper-1.701.0nb2, libart2-2.3.17nb1, fltk-1.1.7nb4,
openexr-1.2.2nb1, librfuncs-1.0.7nb1, mDNSResponder-108,
aspell-0.60.4nb2, xmlcatmgr-2.2nb1, libxml2-2.6.26,
libgpg-error-1.0nb1, libgcrypt-1.2.2nb1, libxslt-1.1.17,
htdig-3.2.0b6, openldap-client-2.3.27, libusb-0.1.12nb1,
cyrus-sasl-2.1.21, glut-6.4.2, gle-3.1.0nb2, xscreensaver-4.22nb5

Help!

-- 
John.