Thanks for the pointer about how to run disklabel interactively.
I tried it out, and I learned that the problem is somehow related
to the fact that the disk reports a sector size of 514 bytes rather
than the expected 512 bytes.  More details below.

When I start out with a completely clean disk, i.e. no disklabel
installed, sysinst barfs as follows:

    disklabel: warning, boot block size % sector-size != 0
    disklabel: warning, super block size % sector-size != 0
    disklabel: ioctl DIOCSDINFO: label magic number or checksum is
wrong!
    (disklabel or kernel is out of date?)

Then I get a friendly message:

    disklabel -w -r sd0 mydisk failed.  I can't continue

And then I'm hosed.

When I try to create the disklabel by hand as you suggested, I
am not able to get a label on to the disk at all, unless I tell
disklabel that the sector size is 512 rather than 514.  After
I do this, I am able to write out a disklabel.

But then things fail in other interesting ways, that I haven't had
time to document.

The disk is from IBM.  I have never seen a sector size other than
512: is there something weird about this disk?  Any ideas about how
to proceed?

-russ

--- Daniel Eggert <danieleggert@mac.com> wrote:
> On torsdag, okt 10, 2002, at 19:52 Europe/Copenhagen, Russell McManus
> 
> wrote:
> 
> > After doing a bunch of reading, I guess the question is simply
> > how to get an initial disklabel on to the new disk before sysinst
> > takes a crack at it.  I'm going to try out a bunch of the
> > examples from the disklabel man page, but if anyone knows how
> > to do this, the help would be much appreciated.
> 
> Try to check out appendix B of 'The NetBSD operating system -- a
> short 
> guide': "Installing without sysinst". It explains how to use
> disklabel:
> 	http://www.mclink.it/personal/MG2508/nbsdeng/ap-inst.html
> Good luck.
> 
> Daniel
> 
> 
> 
> > -russ
> >
> > --- Russell McManus <russell_mcmanus@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> I've got the install iso cd image, and I'm trying to install
> >> 1.6 onto a completely empty disk.  The disk has had neither
> >> macos nor netbsd installed on it before.
> >>
> >> sysinst notes that the disk does not have a macos or netbsd
> >> disklable. sysinst then runs the disklabel -r command, which
> fails.
> >> I suspect that I need to do something from the shell before
> sysinst
> >> tries to install the partition map to get this to work right.
> >>
> >> any ideas on how to proceed? I didn't see this mentioned in the
> >> 1.6 macppc install notes.
> >>
> >> -russ
> >>
> >> __________________________________________________
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> >
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