>The reason I want to do this is because I would like to dual boot this
>disk with Linux and NetBSD, which requires both bootable filesystems
>to be on cylinders < 1024.  I wanted to avoid having non-consecutive
>IDE partitions.  The only solution seemed to be to have Linux's root
>disk on IDE partition 1, NetBSD disk space to be on partition 2, and
>the rest of Linux's disk space on partitions 3 and 4.  However, I am
>thwarted by NetBSD's expectation that its disklabel will be on
>partition 4.

i've successfully gotten my machine (486/50 from '92) at home to
triple boot (dos 5.0, linux 1.1.59, and netbsd-current as of 19980718)
by partitioning the two five gig ide disks using a redhat rescue
floppy.

the primary disk has all partitions in use:

1 dos    (~150 meg c:)
2 ext2fs (~50 meg /)
3 netbsd (~2 gig)
4 extended (~2.5 gig), consisting of 5, 6, 7, and 8
5 dos
6 ext2fs
7 ext2fs
8 ext2fs

note that this places the first cylinder of all operating systems
within the 1023 boundary.  and linux's lilo does the boot selection
for me.  from the floppy.  when installing the netbsd disklabel, the
regular boot sector became broked and started insisting on netbsd
only.

>Feel free to beat me savagely about the head and shoulders with a clue
>stick if I'm missing something obvious, but I'm stumped here.

perhaps something has changed in the last year...?

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