Subject: Re: Disk Formatter for Quantum!?
To: Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@loki.stanford.edu>
From: Robert Nestor <rnestor@metronet.com>
List: port-mac68k
Date: 12/31/1997 14:25:59
Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@loki.stanford.edu> wrote:

>> > The last time I used Spot On, I thought it was able to partition drives. 
If
>> > so, why are you trying to use HD Setup? Just make MacOS partitions, and 
use
>> > Mkfs to turn them into the needed NetBSD partitions.
>> 
>> you can do that? just make hfs partitions ahave Mkfs turn them into NetBSD
>> partitions? last time i tried this (accidently), Mkfs crashed. is there a
>> new version of Mkfs that lets you do this?
>
>Mkfs, from about version 1.4 something, has been able to do this. Well,
>it's supposed to. If it doesn't it's a BUG.
>
>If you can, try it again. If it keeps failing, we need to know about it.

I haven't gotten any reports that this wasn't working in the latter 
versions of Mkfs and I thought it had been pretty well wrung out in this 
area.  In fact I used version 1.45 this past weekend and converted a 
bunch of HFS partitions on a new disk without any difficulty.

The only confusing thing that I've heard about is they way Mkfs 
identifies partitions that have been created by various disk formatters.  
If the disk formatter was used to create any type of A/UX partition Mkfs 
will show it as a NetBSD type partition *ONLY* if it has all the proper 
flags set and would be recognized by the Installer or a NetBSD Kernel; 
otherwise it shows up as an Apple Free partition.

But, if anyone has a problem please let me know and I'll see what I can 
do to fix it.

-bob