OpenNMS isn't something you would be able to casually install and use. It is something you would have to plan for.
Taking something even more common such as Apache 2 or a Postfix server, these packages supply daemons that run in the background. You need to configure them. For mysql, there is a manual in /usr/share/doc/packages/mysql/. The manual is hundreds of pages long and details the installation and use of the mysql database, including an important section on securing it. Most packages have some documentation located in /usr/share/doc/packages/. Make it a habit of looking there for information on newly installed packages. Sometimes there will also be a package of just documentation, such as blender-doc or samba-doc. If you look in /usr/share/doc/packages/samba for example, you may even find three Samba 3 books.
If you have an interest in OpenNMS, you may find this FLOSS podcast interesting:
http://www.twit.tv/floss15