Problem:  How do you create a partition to observe cylinder boundaries that it 
resides outside of?!?

> When I originally installed NetBSD 1.4D, it correctly reported the correct
> BIOS geometry of 1024 / 255 / 63.  But since then something, somewhere,
> managed to mung the BIOS geometry to 1024 / 15 / 63.

Remember this is a 13.6 BB drive, and the BIOS geometry (however translated) 
can only cover the first 8.4 BB.

After running pfdisk and Linux fdisk -- both of which complain about 
partitions not being aligned on cylinder boundaries -- I get the idea cylinder 
boundaries may be behind my head count problem.

I did go a little beserk there.  After all, I was putting NetBSD entirely 
outside the last (BIOS geometry) cylinder; how _could_ I observe cylinder 
boundaries?!?  Sheez.

Right now, it's a serious problem getting other OSes installed (the reason for 
putting NetBSD beyond 8.4 BB).  DOS fdisk sees a 472.5 MB drive.  Linux fdisk 
will only run if you let it wipe the drive and start over (although once 
installed on a partition created by NetBSD fdisk, it does _seem_ to run fine).

I won't know for sure unless I redo everything from scratch, but my tentative 
conclusion is:  Create your partitions on cylinder boundaries, even with this 
new improved ability to boot using LBA.

The problem:  How?!?


--Jim Howard  <jiho@mail.c-zone.net>