David Laight <david@l8s.co.uk> writes:

> >  but when I try
> > to boot, I get something like this at the bottom of the screen:
> > 
> > F1: windows
> > F2: netbsd
> > 3
> > 
> > Of course the F1 and F2 lines are printed by the bootloader.
> > The 3 gets printed when I either select F2, or wait for the
> > bootloader timeout.  Any ideas on how to debug this problem
> > further?
> 
> RTFM. mbr(8) sayes error 3 is "No operating system.  The bootsector
> was loaded successfully, but it was not valid (i.e.  the magic number
> check failed)."

Well, I wasn't smart enough make the obvious association from the "3"
error message to mbr(8) man page.  How silly of me!

> What you have (probably) forgotten to do is run /usr/mdec/installboot
> alternatively:
> - your root filesystem isn't at the start of the BIOS partition
> - your root filesystem is in a part of the disk that can't be
>   read using bios commands - 8Gb for old bioses.

But more seriously, thanks for your help with this.  It is indeed th
case that the root file system is more than 8gb from the start of the
disk.  Somehow, I got it working anyway, see my earlier post to
port-i386.

-russ