Jonathan Stone <jonathan@DSG.Stanford.EDU> writes:

> NetBSD is in the middle of switching partition IDs from the value used
> by the original 386BSD (also used by FreeBSD) to a unique ID, not
> least so that FreeBSD and NetBSD can coexist on the same disk.

Aha.  This clears up a lot of confusion.  I'm using just the released
1.3.2, which doesn't grok id 169.

> The other gotcha is that i _think_ you are confusing MBR partitions
> (aka "slices" with BSD-style disklabels.  Linux has no equivalent of
> BSD disklabels.

No, I'm very clear on the distinction.  Linux's fdisk does in fact
allow you to manipulate _both_ MBR partitions and BSD-style
disklabels, to the point it will even "link" a BSD partition to an MBR
partition, so that you can mount an ext2fs filesystem from within
NetBSD without fudging the disklabel yourself.  However, it's not so
good as _creating_ a BSD disklabel, or at least it failed to do so
correctly in my case.

I realize that my original question made me come off seeming like a
clueless luser, but I really do know which end is up (most of the
time, heh) and in fact my system is now happily dualbooted and
chugging away.

What I'm curious about, however, with whether the sysinst behavior I
described in my previous message is in fact a bug, and if so, should I
try to devise a fix for it.

> Yes, the terminology is confusing...

Only in the sense that Linux people and NetBSD people tend to use the
same words to refer to different things, and I tend to straddle both
camps, iconoclast that I am.

-- 
Mirian Crzig Lennox                                Systems Anarchist
          "There's a New World Order coming every minute.
                      Make mine extra cheese."