On Sun, 24 Dec 2006 19:18:42 -0700 (MST)
"Michael L. Hitch" <mhitch@lightning.msu.montana.edu> wrote:

> On Sun, 24 Dec 2006, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> 
> > There's something wrong with the mbr boot, though.  It displays both
> > choices, waits the requisite 10 seconds, then says "Error 3", as if
> > it doesn't have a default boot partition.  (I'm 99% certain I did
> > specify one...)  If I type '1', it does boot NetBSD.  How do I fix
> > this?  I've reread fdisk(8) many times, obviously missing
> > something.  I haven't yet tried installboot, but I assume that
> > that's not the problem since it does boot if I type '1'.
> 
>    Is the NetBSD partition marked active in fdisk?  I think if the
> boot menu times out, it's supposed to boot the active partition.
> 
Yes, it's marked active:

# fdisk wd0
Disk: wd0d
NetBSD disklabel disk geometry:
cylinders: 620181, heads: 16, sectors/track: 63 (1008 sectors/cylinder)
total sectors: 625142448

BIOS disk geometry:
cylinders: 1023, heads: 255, sectors/track: 63 (16065 sectors/cylinder)
total sectors: 625142448

Partition table:
0: NetBSD (sysid 169)
    bootmenu: NetBSD
    start 63, size 563206707 (275003 MB, Cyls 0-35057), Active
1: <UNUSED>
2: <UNUSED>
3: FreeBSD or 386BSD or old NetBSD (sysid 165)
    bootmenu: FreeBSD
    start 563206770, size 61935678 (30242 MB, Cyls 35058-38913/80/63)
Bootselector enabled, timeout 10 seconds.




		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb