On Sat, 16 Sep 2000, root wrote:

> Hello everyone,
> 	I'd like to have to NetBSD system on the same
> box with only one HD, one for a test environment and
> one for a everyday use. Questions:
> - is it possible?

You could probably do it with the boot selector, ("fdisk -B").

> - is the 2nd installation straightforward? (I suppouse it's not)

The installer may not be able to deal with two MBR records of type
"169". (Maybe... never tried it.) You could try making the second MBR
record anything but type "169", say type "0", switch them before the
second install (with NetBSD fdisk), and afterwards, use fdisk to
convert them both to their final form and set up the boot selector.

> - must Disklabels be kept in sync?
> - is it sufficient to change the active slice to choose the
>   system to boot from? 

In principle. Each MBR "slice"'s disklabel covers the whole disk, but
the installer won't try to mount any partitions outside of the "slice"
it just installed. Therefore, the disklabels in the two slices would
not be the same. If you intend to share any partitions
(post-installation), you must make the parameters of the shared
partition(s) to match.