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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!uwm.edu!news.moneng.mei.com!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!library.ucla.edu!csulb.edu!csus.edu!netcom.com!hasty From: hasty@netcom.com (Amancio Hasty Jr) Subject: Re: Can NetBSD-0.9 and DOS get along? Message-ID: <hastyCL7K7p.CCv@netcom.com> Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest) References: <dvdjnsCL011x.Juw@netcom.com> <MYCROFT.94Feb11100414@duality.gnu.ai.mit.edu> <2jml0j$o86@sparc10.entropic.com> Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 09:40:37 GMT Lines: 79 In article <2jml0j$o86@sparc10.entropic.com> kenh@wrl.epi.com writes: >In article <MYCROFT.94Feb11100414@duality.gnu.ai.mit.edu>, >Charles Hannum <mycroft@duality.gnu.ai.mit.edu> wrote: >> >>In article <dvdjnsCL011x.Juw@netcom.com> dvdjns@netcom.com (David >>Jones) writes: >> >> If the SCSI card is on the system I can't boot the kernel copy >> floppy. >> >>You haven't said what happens when you try to boot it. >> >>I use a 1542B and various SCSI-1 and SCSI-2 devices on my (i386) >>development box, and it has always worked dandy. On other machines, I >>have DOS, NT, and NetBSD all peacefully coexisting. This is not at >>all difficult to do. > >I respectfully disagree. I don't think it's easy at all the first time. >Everyone I know that has tried it (including me) has trashed their partition >table. > >The main stumbling blocks I ran into were the following: > >- When you use DOS's FDISK to parition your disk, there's no way to find out > the exact geometry of the paritions; all FDISK reports is percentages and > megabytes. I was using the DOS 5 FDISK; I believe someone reported that > earlier versions of DOS had FDISKs that reported exact parition geometries. > This may be the case, but at the time I couldn't find a single persion that > had an earlier copy of DOS; they were all DOS 5 and up. So I couldn't even > find the parition geometry that the installation instructions wanted. > >- The line "you must then use a parition editor to mark your NetBSD parition > as numeric type 165" is a gross oversimplication! First off, I'm pretty > ignorant of DOS tools; I freely admit it. I couldn't _find_ a parition > editor. FDISK certainly didn't do it, and I didn't find any other DOS > utilities that did what I needed. A friend of mine tried doing this with > one of the Norton utilities, but he said this didn't work either. (He > quite possibly could have done it wrong; I am just reporting what he told > me). Finally, after dredging through the FAQ, I discover a reference to > pfdisk. "Ah-ha!" I said to myself, "no doubt the NetBSD team has put a > copy of pfdisk on their ftp site!" Well, they didn't. Archie soon showed > a copy of pfdisk available ... from the Linux distribution. Well, I snagged > it, and once again I was in business; this solved both the parition geometry > problem and the parition editor problem. > >A totally unrelated nit - I couldn't create more than 4 filesystems on a NetBSD >parition during the installation process. I could do it by hand, but if I >tried to do it via the installation program I got the message "bad magic >number" when the filesystems were mounted. But if I newfs the same filesystems >myself, I could mount them fine. Go figure. > >First off, I don't want to seem ungrateful; I realized the NetBSD team has >worked very hard, and I'm sure all of the users out here appreciate it (I know >I do). And I will admit that installating NetBSD on a disk so it co-exists >with DOS is easy ... _once you know how_. It's figuring it out that's the >tough part :-) > >I realize that perhaps the core team don't have free machines available to test >the installation procedure; therefore, I hereby offer my machine as a test >for the 1.0 installation procedure, whenever that is going to happen. It >hasn't actually arrived, but it should be here on Wednesday of this week. So >if there is work going on for the 1.0 installation (I subscribed to the >tech-install list, but I haven't seen much on it), please feel free to contact >me. Someone should smooth the installation process to co-exist with DOS :-) There were several postings on comp.os.386bsd.development related to this problem. I think the thread's subject is pfdisk... Amancio -- FREE unix, gcc, tcp/ip, X, open-look, interviews, tcl/tk, MIME, midi, sound at freebsd.cdrom.com:/pub/FreeBSD Amancio Hasty, Consultant | Home: (415) 495-3046 | e-mail hasty@netcom.com | ftp-site depository of all my work: ahasty@cisco.com | sunvis.rtpnc.epa.gov:/pub/386bsd/X