On Sun, 25 Nov 2007 03:07:37 -0800 (PST)
Cem Kayali <cemkayali@eticaret.com.tr> wrote:

> 
> 
> 
> James Hartley wrote:
> > 
> > I have searched some, but surprisingly little comes up.
> > 
> > What is required to ensure that the MBR is preserved when installing
> > 4.0_RC4 to an empty partition on a system already with an operating
> > system installed?
> > 
> > Thanks for any insight shared.
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On my previous notebook, there were Windows recovery on first
> partition, Windows XP on second one and there was third partition for
> personal data.
> 
> I used GPARTED to create fourth partition by splitting third one to
> two. Then, i installed NetBSD onto third one and used GAG to create a
> new boot/mbr. It was easier to install GAG then GRUB, and also it
> preserved previous settings too... Fourth partition had fat32 format,
> so that windows and netbsd could both write data on it (data sharing).

I've generally done things that way, too, though whether or not I spend
space on the FAT32 partition depends on what I might want to share --
often, a remote file system is easier. 

In the past, I used Partition Magic under Windows to repartition the
disk.  Today, I'm more likely to boot an Ubuntu LiveCD and use its
partition editor.  (Note: the last few times I've done that, Vista was
unhappy about something and insisted on scanning the disk.  No big
deal, and it doesn't take that long, but I'd recommend booting Windows
after the repartition and before installing NetBSD.)



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