Unix and NetBSD Basics for Admins

Who this page is for

Use this page if you are an admin coming from Windows-centric tooling, hypervisor consoles, or managed cloud UIs and have limited Unix background.

Goal: give you enough orientation to run Cells safely without guessing.

Command-line basics you need first

most Cells commands are run as root (or through doas)
paths starting with / are absolute paths from filesystem root
configuration is text files under /etc; runtime data is usually under /var

Example pattern:

doas cellmgr cell list --view merged

If your environment already uses a root shell, you can run the same command without doas.

NetBSD paths that matter for Cells

Think of these as three separate areas:

desired state (what you want): /etc/cellmgr
runtime state (what currently exists): /var/cellmgr
backups (recovery material): /var/backups/cellmgr

Common files:

/etc/cellmgr/<name>.cell: cell definition
/etc/cellmgr/<name>.volume: persistent volume definition
/etc/cellmgr/<name>.apply: provisioning/configuration plan

Safe operating loop (best practice)

For almost every change, use this sequence:

inspect current state (list/show)
change desired config (create/set)
preview with dry-run (cellmgr apply --dry-run ...)
execute apply (cellmgr apply ...)
verify (cellmgr ... list, cellctl list -T, cellctl stats -T)

This loop prevents accidental runtime drift and makes changes auditable.

Terms you will see everywhere

cell: isolated process domain on the shared NetBSD kernel
volume: persistent storage outside the writable runtime overlay
desired: intended configuration in manifests
runtime: currently materialized live state
reconcile/apply: operation that makes runtime match desired
apply plan: repeatable provisioning instructions in *.apply

Where to continue