>I eventually ended up going back with the NetBSD fdisk and putting those values
>in sync.  I'd recommend using that or pfdisk to correct the partition table.

 Right, I'd forgotten about (NetBSD) fdisk.

>>I can mount /dev/fd0a as a msdos device and copy stuff from it (hence
>>the output from fips) but disklabel says:
>>
>>disklabel: ioctl DIOCGDINFO: Invalid argument

>I seem to remember this error will occur, but the disklabel command actually
>succeeds.

 But not for me :-(

>>I can't mount /dev/wd1?, mount says:
>>
>>msdos: mount: Invalid argument
>>
>>but disklabel (only for wd1 or wd1d -- presumably for the
>>inconsistent reasons currently being discussed) says:
>>#        size   offset    fstype   [fsize bsize   cpg]
>>d: 536870911        0    unused        0     0        # (Cyl.    0 - 3947580

>You'll need to fix this 'd' partition.


 But the whole point is that that is what I get `out of the box.'  wd1
is my MS-DOS drive and works fine, thank you very much.  It strikes me
that something else is a bit screwy.

 Just trying (NetBSD) fdisk,

For my NetBSD drive, it says:

# fdisk /dev/wd0d
******* Working on device /dev/wd0d *******
parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
cylinders=1048 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl)

 Figures below won't work with BIOS for partitions not in cyl 1
parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are:
cylinders=1048 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl)

Warning: BIOS sector numbering starts with sector 1
Information from DOS bootblock is:
The data for partition 0 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 1 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 2 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 3 is:
sysid 165,(NetBSD)
    start 0, size 50000 (24 Meg), flag 80
        beg: cyl 0/ sector 1/ head 0;
        end: cyl 1023/ sector 63/ head 255
# 


 and for the MS-DOS drive it says:

# fdisk /dev/wd1d
******* Working on device /dev/wd1d *******
parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
cylinders=1024 heads=8 sectors/track=17 (136 blks/cyl)

 Figures below won't work with BIOS for partitions not in cyl 1
parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are:
cylinders=1024 heads=8 sectors/track=17 (136 blks/cyl)

Warning: BIOS sector numbering starts with sector 1
Information from DOS bootblock is:
The data for partition 0 is:
sysid 6,(Primary 'big' DOS (> 32MB))
    start 63, size 1054305 (514 Meg), flag 0
        beg: cyl 0/ sector 1/ head 1;
        end: cyl 522/ sector 63/ head 31
The data for partition 1 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 2 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 3 is:
<UNUSED>
# 


 It reads my MS-DOS disk fine (barring that it complains every time
that it cannot find the disk label), but comes back with some juddery
data for my NetBSD drive (is it really 24MB?) given that both are 1048
cyl, WD2540.


Cheers,

	Ian

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      Ian Fitchet			I.D.Fitchet@fulcrum.co.uk
  Fujitsu Fulcrum Telecommunications ltd., Fordrough Lane, Birmingham, B9 5FL