Methods and apparatuses for automatic system setup. At least one embodiment of the present invention stores the setup configuration information (e.g., in files and/or in directory servers). The setup configuration information is stored (e.g., using a configuration file naming scheme) so that the configuration information for a particular machine can be found. A setup daemon on the machine searches for suitable configuration information in a number of places, such as: in a location in a local file system, in locations in mounted file volumes, and directory servers. The configuration information may be encrypted, and the setup daemon searches for the decryption key in a similar fashion.