Filesystem Layout

NextBSD uses an explicit four-domain layout. Every system resource lives under a domain root, so it is always clear who owns a file and whether an OS upgrade may replace it.

Domain	Root	Owner and meaning
System	/System/Library	Provided by the OS. Treat as immutable — upgrades replace it.
Local	/Local/Library	This machine. Admin-installed, survives OS upgrades.
Network	/Network/Library	Network-shared. Reserved; not used yet.
User	~/Library	Per-user.

Not quite Apple's convention

On macOS, the bare /Library is the Local domain. NextBSD does not do that. Every domain has an explicit root, so where Apple would use /Library, NextBSD uses /Local/Library.

The reason is that a bare /Library makes it ambiguous whether something is OS-owned or admin-owned, which matters when an upgrade decides what it may overwrite. Keeping /System strictly for the OS and /Local strictly for the machine removes the guesswork.

If you are porting instructions written for macOS, the mechanical translation is /Library/… → /Local/Library/….

Where things actually live

Path	Used by	Purpose
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/	launchd (PID 1)	OS daemon plists — scanned first
/Local/Library/LaunchDaemons/	launchd (PID 1)	Third-party daemon plists — scanned second
/System/Library/Extensions/	kextd, kextload	Kernel extensions (drivers)
/dev/ioregistry	ioreg, libIOKit	The in-kernel IOKit registry
/boot/kernel/kernel	loader	The kernel
/etc/os-release	anything asking what OS this is	Name and build stamp
/bin/nextbsd-version	you	Build version reporting

A note on /boot/kernel

On stock FreeBSD, /boot/kernel holds the kernel plus a tree of .ko modules that kldload pulls in on demand. NextBSD ships no .ko tree — the image build removes it, so /boot/kernel contains only kernel itself.

Two consequences worth knowing:

• Anything a driver needs must be compiled into the kernel; there is no autoload path to fall back on.
• Drivers that are separately loadable arrive as kernel extensions under /System/Library/Extensions/, handled by kextload/kextstat, not kldload.

Standard BSD paths

Everything you expect from a BSD is still where it should be — /etc, /usr, /var, /usr/local for packages, /home for users. The four-domain model sits alongside the traditional hierarchy rather than replacing it.

Package-installed software from pkg lands under /usr/local exactly as it does on FreeBSD.

See also

• Service Management with launchd — the two LaunchDaemons directories in practice
• Installing Packages — where pkg puts things