Hi,
I don't know if this is the right list to send this message to, but I would
apreciate any help or someone pointing me to a better help source. I am
trying to install NetBSD 1.6 in my laptop (pentiun 4, 2 Ghz, 1 Gb RAM, 30 Gb
IDE hard disk). I am not new to unix (not to much at least).
This has been my path so far: Linux RedHat -> LinuxDebian -> FreeBSD (and
finally, trying ...) -> NetBSD
As you can see, I have been slowly moving to get closer to unix roots, but
never made any install in a laptop before, well, to the point:
I had my hd with 2 particions, one for Windows and the other smaller ~2GB,
ready for installing BSD, I fired the installer (booting from CD, no
floppies) and everything was fine mostly. I created the particion and
selected not to install a bootloader (plan to use NT's), I selected not to
install the NetBSD bootcode either, since, as I said, I want to use windows
bootloader. The installer let me select from varius types of installations:
standard, standard with X, custom and use existing. I tryed the first two,
but it fails, I see a comment telling me something like standard requieres
at least ~4GB and my fresh BSD particion is ~2GB, so I supose that could be
one cause. So I try custom and the program shows me a list of the disk
labels, where "a" and "b" are "unused", "c" is the whole disk and "d" is the
whole BSD particion (neither can't be touched) and "f" is again my BSD
particion, I select it, set the mount point to / and try to go ahead but it
fails telling me that wd0 could not be mounted, no other message, so I try
using the unused label "a" instead, setting its type to NetBSD and its
offset and size to the same of the BSD "f" label, it is, to the fisical
particion, but it fails even so. As you see, my problem is that I don't
understand as well as I thought the concept of disk labels (I read the whole
NetBSD guide, though), it is a transparent concept in FreeBSD, that's why.
My questions, why are "a" and "b" labels unused? do I have to make more than
one fisical particion to install NetBSD? do I need to make at least a swap
particion or can it be used has a file inside the BSD particion?
My hardware is fairly modern, so I don't think there should be any problem
concerning the fact that I am trying to install NetBSD to far off the
begining of the disk, am I wrong?
Well, that would be all, As I said, any help would be greatly apreciated, I
like the NetBSD way and intend to settle with this OS.
Thanks in advance.