Re: two NetBSD images on the same disk?

[fukumoto%imasy.or.jp@localhost]

Steven M. Bellovin <smb%cs.columbia.edu@localhost> wrote:
>> For reasons given below, I would like to have two different bootable
>> NetBSD images on the same disk.  Is this possible?

One of my box has NetBSD4/i386 in wd0a in slice 'b' and
NetBSD5/amd64+Xen3.4 in wd0j in slice 'a' with no problem as far as I
can tell.  I'm using boot codes from NetBSD5 and /boot.cfg in wd0a, I
can choose i386 and amd64 by boot menu.

Although, installation had some nuisances and I don't remember what I
did exactly.  Previously 'a' slice had Windows but I trashed it and
installed amd64 there from CD-R.  I think I needed to erase the
previous boot code from GRUB with dd to replace with NetBSD boot.  If
I remember correctly, sysinst recognized only one slice of NetBSD and
I had to change NetBSD slice temporarily to something else to make it
recognize the new slice for installation.

I think you can access different slice by just specifying appropriate
sector offset to disklabel.  mbrlabel(8) automatically set up
disklabel partitions from all slices that has sysid NetBSD.  It made
some wacky partitioning on my disk, wd0j in 'a' slice and wd0a in 'b'
slice, but since I'm lazy, I'm using it as is.


                                                FUKUMOTO Atsushi
                                                fukumoto%imasy.or.jp@localhost