Re: Installing, then installing CDE

[Stephen Borrill <netbsd%precedence.co.uk@localhost>]

On Thu, 20 Aug 2026, Liam Proven wrote:
> On 18/08/2026 6:01 pm, Liam Proven wrote:
> > No matter; this is just an experimental VM. No need to fix anything, I will 
> > just try again. It is all learning.
>
> Small update:
>
> In the end, I have deadlines, and I'd wasted days on this. I could not get 
> CDE working. I abandoned it, finished my article, and submitted it yesterday 
> afternoon. It should run soon.
>
> I made the changes requested in the README file. I did not expect that was a 
> thing! I expect a packaging tool to do such things for me, TBH.
>
> I tried to enable `portmap` from /etc/rc.d but there was nothing related in 
> there. I installed it, and it installed something. It did not help. That 
> might be the issue.

As in my later correction (and Michael's) portmap was a typo, it needed to 
be rpcbind. Sorry about that. Without rpcbind running, CDE won't start as 
it needs it for internal messaging. This lso requires a resolvable 
hostname.

> In the end, I installed LXDE and that pretty much just worked.
>
> I resized the window. I tried `xrandr` but could not work out the magic 
> incantation.

xrandr to list modes
xrandr -s MODE to change

> So I installed `lxrandr` and that worked fine. Saving did not 
> work; on a reboot it always went back to 800*600.

Yes, it will inherit the console size as the default.

> I did find that once I made the virtual screen bigger, mouse movement became 
> horribly slow and the VM would queue up mouse movements for a minute or more. 
> So, when I found the pointer didn't move, I waggled the mouse -- and as a 
> result the VM pointer moved randomly on its own for ages.
>
> I suggest this:
>
> https://wiki.netbsd.org/projects/project/virtual-box-guest-tools/
>
> Is a priority.
>
> Someone tried a decade back:
>
> https://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-i386/2014/08/20/msg003310.html
>
> This is a deal-breaker.
>
> Virtualbox is 100% FOSS and runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, and there is 
> an experimental/unofficial FreeBSD version too. It is the most cross-platform 
> free hypervisor.
>
> I corrupted my VirtualBox VM at least twice more, and got the same error 
> about "rc.conf not being enabled" (or something like that.)
>
> It _looks_ like using the `reboot` command is *not safe* in Virtualbox. Once 
> I made sure to always use `shutdown -r now` it did not happen again.

I'm am curious about why NetBSD and your installation of VirtualBox play 
so poorly together. It is used quite widely by NetBSD developers (and some 
develop both); certainly I've never had problems (even when trying to use 
raw partitions to virtually boot a bare-metal partition) and I always use 
reboot. During writing the below, I edited many files and just typed 
reboot immediately afterwards.

What storage controller are you using in VirtualBox? I have IDE (PIIX4) 
backed with a .vhd on Windows.

Similarly, what graphics controller have you set in VirtualBox?

I've just tried afresh on VirtualBox:

1) New BSD>NetBSD 64-bit VM with 4GB RAM, 2vCPU, VHD as backing file 
(without EFI)
2) Run through installer picking defaults (MBR partitioning)
3) Boot installed machine
4) vi /etc/rc.conf and add dhcpcd=YES and rpcbind=YES
5) vi .profile and uncomment PKG_PATH line
6) echo "cde" > /etc/myname
7) Edit /etc/hosts and add cde to the 127.0.0.1 line
127.0.0.1 cde localhost localhost.
8) reboot
9) login as root
10) startcde

Reasoning:
4) is needed to get rpcbind working
6) sets a hostname
7) means it can resolve its hostnme

I think these same things would apply to other BSDs too.

With no hostname set, CDE crashes and dtsession core dumps. With a 
hostname set, but not resolvable (not in hosts), CDE hangs on its startup 
screen. I think this is what you were seeing.


Once in CDE, xrandr -s 1280x1024 alters resolution, but you need to 
right-click and pick Restart Workspace Manager for CDE to realign the 
toolbar. X and its pointer continue to work as expected, no sluggishness 
or pausing.

I then edited /boot.cfg and inserted vesa 0x145 in the default boot line 
so that it switches to 1280x1024x32 at the console (which is inherited as 
the X default), i.e. first line reads:

menu=Boot normally:rndseend /var/db/entropy-file;vesa 0x145;boot

Looking at /var/log/Xorg.0.log, I can see it is using the vmware X driver, 
not the vboxvideo driver which because the video reports itself as 
"VMware Virtual SVGA II". This is because the default video card in 
VirtualBox for BSD is VMSVGA, not VBoxSVGA, so this is a user-side not 
NetBSD-side issue. Changing to the latter alters the graphics to 
"VirtualBox Graphics" and the vboxvideo driver is used. It doesn't offer 
many benefits as the rest of the VM additions are missing and even 
with them, display resizing only supports Windows, Linux and Solaris 
(so BSDs are out of luck).

--
Stephen