"Darrin B. Jewell" wrote:
> 
> ...
>
> The primary issue under discussion is how to properly use
> the Apple Partition Map to hold NetBSD partitions.  Initially,
> the thought was to use a pmPartType of "NetBSD", and
> keep additional information in the pmBootArgs reserved
> area of the partition map entry.  Since we have discovered
> some disadvantages to this idea, we are now considering both
> encoding the fstype name in the pmPartType as well as optionally
> encoding the extra disklabel partition information in the
> pmBootArgs.
>
> ...
>

Are there any more general plans for NetBSD's handling of disk
partitions?  Your direction is good for power users of Apple stuff,
but may cause frustration for us lesser users from other OS vendors
or architectures:

Before installing NetBSD, I'd like the option to use the native OS
and its tools to repartition the drive and reserve some space "for
NetBSD".

The installation program should be able to find/allocate the BIOS
partition entry (or, create a minimal BIOS partition table when no
other OS is installed or wanted).  For new users, the install
program needs to supply appropriate NetBSD partition sizes and file
system types/flags.  A consistent machine-independent view of the
NetBSD partitions would make it easier for an administrator who is
familiar with NetBSD to install on a new architecture.

After install, the NetBSD fstab (at least for NetBSD partitions)
should remain unchanged when other operating systems have made
modifications to the BIOS partition table.

As an example, FreeBSD/i386 has 3 device layers: wd0 for the whole
disk, wd0s[1-4] for "slices" (BIOS partitions) and wd0s1[a-h] for
disklabel partitions.  Partitions from other OSs map consistently
into this scheme, instead of automagically showing up somewhere
in the disklabel.

-Neil