> (I find disk geometry to be the second-worst part of installing
> NetBSD, exceeded only by generating an Xconfig file....)

I find neither of those to be a problem with NetBSD, only with
NetBSD/i386.  Use sane hardware (personally, I favor Suns) and all that
foofooraw vanishes "like a gambler's lucky streak".

> The two thoughts that occur to me are checking the BIOS parameters
> for the drive on both machines, and seeing what disklabel says on
> both machines (for the ailing one, using a floppy or CD boot, of
> course).

Both machines?  All this has been done on the same machine.  What there
are two of is installs on the disk in question.

Actually, I'm now of the opinion that all the disklabel and
partitioning trouble can be ascribed to my forgetting to specify any
mount points (which really makes this a recommendation that sysinst do
at least minimal checking of mount points - in my case, it would have
been enough to have checked that there is at least one partition with
mount point /, and I would argue it should check for exactly one such.)

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