On Sun, Dec 21, 2003 at 09:38:39PM +0100, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
> > is there any way to preserve first sectors on / to install new kernel in
> > the future? or maybe there is a method to shrink rw-mounted fs?
> 
> Unless you machine is really old, you should not have any problems loading
> the kernel from the end of disk. The NetBSD boot loader has been able to use
> LBA when available for a long time.

yes, I remember problems with booting on P1 and P2 machines with IDE drives.
but this is P3 1.4 GHz machine with SCSI RAID controller:

mly0 at pci2 dev 8 function 1: Mylex AcceleRAID 170
mly0: interrupting at irq 9
mly0: 1 physical channel, firmware 6.00-7-00 (20001214), 32MB RAM
scsibus0 at mly0 channel 0: 16 targets, 1 luns per target
scsibus1 at mly0 channel 1: 16 targets, 1 luns per target
scsibus2 at mly0 channel 2: 16 targets, 1 luns per target
[...]
sd0 at scsibus1 target 0 lun 0: <MYLEX, RAID 1, ONLN> SCSI3 0/direct fixed
sd0: 34984 MB, 4459 cyl, 255 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 71647232 sectors
sd0: sync (50.0ns offset 8), 16-bit (40.000MB/s) transfers, tagged queueing

would NetBSD boot loader have any problem loading kernel from the end of
disk on this configuration?

> > can I create there a new root partition located at <1024 without crashing
> > system - I just want to copy basesystem there, modify disklabel to the new
> > sd0a point and reboot.
> > on which sectors I should create that fs to be sure it will boot?
> > 
> > I don't have any other ideas what could I do...please, help me!
> 
> If your machine can't do LBA the only way would be to reinstall with a small
> / at start of disk. But I think if your box couldn't do LBA you'd be already
> in trouble.

that's why I always create a small / partition. but this machine is already
installed and the biggest problem is that I don't have physical access to it
- I can manage it only through SSH. but if this controller is good and it
will boot kernel from any sectors correctly, then I'll just leave it as it
is now.

> You can see the blocks used by the kernel using fsdb:

thanks, fsdb is really great! recently it's -current version helped me
localizing files broken on bad sectors :)


-- 

s.