Re: Install NetBSD with root on other than partition a?

["Thomas Mueller" <mueller6724%bellsouth.net@localhost>]

> On i386, there needs to be a boot sector at the start of the NetBSD
> partition. And only one slice (sub-partition) can be at the start of the
> partition. I think other platforms have a requirement for some structure
> that must be at the beginning of the NetBSD disk, which would prevent you
> from doing what you want.

> Virtualization could allow you to have multiple NetBSD instances on a
> single machine. Would that meet your requirements?

> Jason M.

On i386 (and maybe amd64?), NetBSD can be started from DOS with dosboot.com, 
though that seems to no longer work beginning with NetBSD 5.0.2.

I still can't boot NetBSD 5.1 directly from wd0a ("Error Not a bootxx image") 
and have been unable to fix that even with installboot.  But I made a small 
hard-disk or giant-floppy image with ffs file system, disklabeled and newfs'ed, 
ran installboot and copied the desired kernels as well as the secondary boot 
loader (/boot).  I can boot that from FreeDOS with grub4dos, then interrupt the 
boot process to input "boot netbsd -a", or other kernel, and choose wd0a for 
the root.  Question is whether I could also choose something other than a if I 
had another NetBSD installation there.


Another possibility would be to put root partition on a USB stick and "mount 
/dev/wd0f /usr" or something like that: only an idea on my part, I haven't 
tried and don't plan to try on present old computer, dating to just before USB 
2.0 became widely available on motherboards: not enough disk space, only 256 MB 
RAM, and USB on motherboard is 1.1.

I don't think virtualization is a good bet on my present computer, believe 
virtualization is much slower than running normally.


Tom