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From: dsmythe@netcom.com (Dave Smythe)
Subject: NetBSD 0.9 -- help me get the partitioning correct, please...
Message-ID: <dsmytheCsppG6.HF4@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
Date: Sun, 10 Jul 1994 06:45:42 GMT
Lines: 102
OK - I'm new at this, so... (just remember - I'm trying to convert
from linux... ;-)
Short version:
- I have 4 partitions on an IDE disk (DOS, 2 linux, BSD (a5))
- I install NetBSD from floppies, it runs fine, BUT
- it installs itself on top of my DOS partition
Now, (I can hear you saying) why is this a problem? Because I share
this machine with my wife...
Anyway, here's some specifics (sorry if I've forgotten anything)
- ZEOS Pantera-90 (Pentium) PCI, 16MB
- PCI IDE (ATA) controller w/ 256K cache (I think)
- ST5660A 528mb (or is that 504Mb... :-)
The disk looks like this:
- 1024 tracks
- 16 heads
- 512 byte sectors
- 63 secs/track
That gives an allocation unit of 1008.
The partitions look like:
(from DOS perspective)
1. PRI DOS MS-DOS_6 120Mb FAT16
2. 16
3. 150
4. 218
(from linux' perspective)
hda1 1 1 244 122944+ 6 DOS 16-bit >=32Mb
hda2 245 245 276 16128 82 linux swap
hda3 277 277 581 153720 83 linux
hda4 582 582 1024 223272 a5
I asked for a 7.5Mb root partition: 15120 sectors
I asked for a 24Mb swap area: 48384 sectors
I gave the rest to /usr
Here's where I probably messed-up:
I specified the NetBSD partition size as 1024-582 cylinders,
or 445536 sectors.
I specified the NetBSD parition offset as 582 cylinders,
or 586656 sectors.
At this point you get the "Are you sure?" question.
The next question, which is not really discussed in the
installation notes, asks whether to (paraphrased) "write to
the disk with the DOS partitions". I'm not quite sure how to
interpret this question; but I tried it both with yes and no
and each seemed to give similar overall results: the area of
the disk allocated to the first partition was used.
Where did I get it wrong?
I have no idea about the bad-sector forwarding thing, so I
answered no.
Miscellanei from the Seagate manual:
- the drive uses neither the landing-zone or write-precomp BIOS
parameters
Just as an aside, the system runs OK under NetBSD, but there are
occasional problems with the disk (I assumed that the driver
needed tuning for this system) resulting in panics and reboots.
I also always see an "extra interrupt" message for the disk
during the boot sequence.
BTW (not intended to precipitate flamage) linux runs just fine...
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks,
D
p.s. "Why NetBSD, and not FreeBSD?" you may ask. It's a long
story... My end goal is to run the BSD single server on
top of mach3. If you have suggestions along these lines
I'm all ears. My rationale was that because the MK appeared
to have been compiled using NetBSD 0.9, that's where I
should start (the one from col.hp.com or somesuch). This
isn't probably a big deal. However, the BSDSS is apparently
NetBSD-based (am I wrong?) and I figured that in the unlikely
event that I actually got it to come up on top of mach that
it would expect its programs and configuration files to be in
certain specific places, which may have migrated some in
FreeBSD...
p.p.s. Is there a way to get NetBSD to boot from floppy only and
not write to my boot sector at all? Will os-bs from FreeBSD
work here? Anyone tried LILO?
--
========================================================================
Dave Smythe N6XLP dsmythe@netcom.com (also dsmythe@cs.stanford.edu)
"If you're haptic and you know it, clap your hands! x/~ x/~"