Hi and thanks for the reply.

I am not entirely sure what output you are after from fdisk. I just then issued the command:

fdisk /dev/rwd0 

And got the following:

Disk: /dev/rwd0d
NetBSD disklabel disk geometry:
cylinders: 77545, heads: 16, sectors/track: 63 (1008 sectors/cylinder)
total sectors: 78165360

BIOS disk geometry:
cylinders: 1024, heads: 240, sectors/track: 63 (15120 sectors/cylinder)
total sectors: 78152400

Partition table:
0: NetBSD (sysid 169)
    bootmenu: NetBSD
    start 63, size 78156162 (38162 MB, Cyls 0-5169/15/1), Active
1: <UNUSED>
2: <UNUSED>
3: <UNUSED>
Bootselector disabled

If what i understand of an extended partition is correct, then i have not used one. I broke the drive up 

to contain a single primary partition and installed NetBSD to that partition with 2 "NetBSD Partitions" 

one for the swap and another to be mounted at / 

I just wiped out the first sector or so then by issuing the command:

dd of=/dev/rwd0d count=4096 if=/dev/zero

After doing that and then doing a re-install (Specifying NetBSD installer to use the whole disk for a 

NetBSD partition) i got a different error. It was the BIOS No System disk error. I then ran an old debian 

linux install CD and attempted to run fdisk from that on the drive, and it told me that the primary 

partition that was setup by NetBSD was outside the physical bounds of the disk. I had created that by 

asking the NetBSD installer to "Use the whole disk" for the partition. 

So using Linux fdisk, i erased the old MBR and created a new one that the linux fdisk sees as being 

inside the physical bounds of the disk. I then restarted the NetBSD installer and reinstalled it on the 

partition that i created with the linux fdisk. After re-installing again i got the "Error 3" message.


I do not know what mbr_bootsel or mbr_ext are so i am unsure what the installer uses. 

One question from the previus mail i sent:

when at the boot prompt when booting from the cd, if i type:

boot wd0a:

It says that the device is not configured. Should this be the case?

Thanks,
Brendon.

> You did not show the output of "fdisk". Sometimes it is a good idea
> to
> zero out the 1st sector before installing the mbr via fdisk, as fdisk
> only writes part of this sector. Also I see you are using either
> mbr_bootsel, or mbr_ext. If mbr_ext and you used an extended
> partition,
> is it possible the extended sector was corrupted?
> 
>