On Sat, 5 Sep 1998, Ulrich Hausmann wrote:

> Is the NetBSD filesystem not that robust and solid? While I can accept,
> up to a certain point, that MacOS file system isn't that solid, OTOH,
> that's widely counterbalanced by the ease of use - at least for me :)).
> Now, I'm a bit anxious, whether or not I'm going to suffer similar
> experiences with the hd. Shuffling stuff off and on a 4 GB hd isn't that
> fun (not even with MacOS!) (?).

The ffs filesystem itself is quite robust. The mac68k disk drivers &
disklabel magic are "touch and go". I suspect you're being bit by a
particular bug that comes into play when you configure a disk with no swap
partition. There's no way to say for sure, really, unless you can tell us
if adding a swap partition fixes it.

It's also true, as Micheal G. Schabert points out, that removable disks
are considerably less reliable than the fixed ones. I low level format all
of mine before I consider them ready for extended use. Fully 1/4 of them
fail the format, and are therefore useless. It is possible, however, to
find an especially good one, one with no user bad blocks at all. I have
booted successfully from one in the past, and I now have a couple, one of
which stays mounted all the time. These are for /usr/obj/, /usr/pkobj, and
/usr/xsrc; all of which are easily replaceable.

No need to shuffle: assuming that the partitions on the new drive are
mounted at /mnt, /mnt/usr, etc., it goes something like this

# cd /
# mtree -def /etc/mtree/NetBSD.dist -p /mnt/ -u
# mkdir /mnt/kern ; mkdir /mnt/mnt ; mkdir /mnt/proc
# pax -r -w -pe -v [^kmp]* mnt
# vi /mnt/etc/fstab

> Then a practical question, somewhere in the man pages I read there is
> way to mount not only ffs but also HFS: Does this mean, I can, without
> any add-on, mount a MacOS formatted hd and read in the files there
> (copying them then to NetBSD partitions)? 

No, not without an add-on. hfsutils-3.2 permits this from within NetBSD,
the installer's 'cpin' is also good for limited use. You could, e.g., only
install base, etc, and kern, cpin the rest of them to the root directory,
and then 'tar xzvpf comp.tar.gz', and so on.
 
> > I'm sorry, that I'm asking so dumb questions, but until the books I
> ordered do not arrive (hoped, in vain, for this weekend) the only
> sources are docs and infos gathered somewhere online. And often they
> aren't that verbose . . .:)) Without all your help, there would be no
> way for me. Thanks!!

Yeah, getting started is still a challenge. It hasn't reached the point
where you can just put in a CD and watch an ad while it completely trashes
your hard drive. No wait, that's a good thing.