I did a custom install using only the base system and GENERIC kernel, later I installed the man pages rather then swap around. Partitioned the drive [ad0] into one large slice [ad0s1] with a 256MB partition for /var, a 256MB swap partition giving me 7.1GB for a root partition. I didn't see a need to split /usr off of / on such a small system. It was cool not to have many packages installed after using PC-BSD and FreeBSD on my desktop. I quickly setup a text based web browser and cvsup tools via pkg_add.

pkg_add -r lynx
pkg_add -r cvsup_without_gui
pkg_add -r fastest_cvsup && rehash

I used fastest_cvsup to check what the best mirrors would be for getting a current copy of the system sources. Usually I'd just zip it over on a USB stick but my local tree was out of date.

fastest_cvsup -c us

tested all the US mirrors and showed me the fastest ones, I copied the example supvile over to my root directory and set the mirror. [#cp /usr/share/examples/cvsup/standard-supfile /root/]. A quick cvsup [cvsup -g -L 1 /root/standard-supfile] later and I was ready to update the machine. I checked out the make files, the FreeBSD handbook and the text files in /usr/src. I issued the make buildworld command and let her compile for about 5 hours. I then did a make buildkernel and it failed, I removed /usr/src and did a freash cvsup, tried again and failed again. Built a kernel using an alternate method discribed in compiling a custom kernel. Installed the kernel, dropped to single user mode and ran a make installworld. Life was good but the system still showed the wrong patch level, probably because the un updated kernel was running in memory :)
A reboot fixed that, tested things to make sure the system was working and no problems with commands not working right. The kernel was made /w sources downloaded a day after world. All was fine

rstf@.launchmodem.com-%uname -a
FreeBSD .launchmodem.com 6.1-RELEASE-p5 FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE-p5 #0: Mon Sep 4 22:48:50 EDT 2006 root@.launchmodem.com:/usr/src/sys/i386/compile/GENERIC i386

I'll setup hostname/custom kernel later and keep tabs of the security mailing list. Since then I have installed porteasy and the ports tree. I checked this link for some advice and isntalled gnu ghostscript via package, I checked on the ftp server to make sure I could get it without X11 support.

pkg_add -r ghostscript-gnu-nox11
I then built cups via porteasy -fb print/cups and took the night off.

I've still got to get back to setting up the printer but I've all ready begun on the configuration files. My primary goals for right now is to get the printer working and a custom kernel ready. Then I play with packet filter [pf the openbsd firewall] and tighting security. I'll post more of my changes later since I have them logged.