You should benefit from adding these to your profile environment (example for sh/bash, adjust for tcsh as appropriate): PLAN9=%%PREFIX%%/plan9; export PLAN9 PATH=$PATH:$PLAN9/bin; export PATH You can also install a default plumbing file if you want: $ mkdir -p ${HOME}/lib $ %%PREFIX%%/plan9/plumb/initial.plumbing ${HOME}/lib/plumbing When installing from the port (as your normal user), you can simply type (while in the port directory) to do the same: make install-user BEWARE: This port can cause some problems if you try to install certain software (including, but not limited to our Ports Collection): - Ports that require `archivers/zip' to build (e.g. `www/mozilla'). If `$PLAN9/bin/zip' would be found as `zip' command (via $PATH) and used, it could easily fail since it does not share options with "standard" `zip' (at least not all of them) - `x11/kdebase3' build can result in crash in `fish.cpp' file if you try to build it with $PLAN9. We suggest you to unset PLAN9 before building any ports that fail with similar symptoms (or unset it for all ports just to be on the safe side) - venti/fmt* commands work only with normal files