Yep,  It was my crappy cable, I also switched comm programs that allows me
to play with flow control during the session.


I do not understand what the instructions mean by:

"Partitioning the disk

It is imprtant to note the disk on which NetBSD is being installed on must
already have an SGI volume header. Disks not already formatted for IRIX
can be prepared with the IRIX fx(1) disk formatting tool.

"

I ran fx on my second drive, what options should I select?  I tried
repartitioning as a root drive.  Was there something else?


I have zero knowledge about irix, and I hope to replace it soon, because
the only drive I have irix on is failing...


when I boot up nebsd, it wont allow me to accept the drive's default
partitions.

screen capture:

I found only one disk, sd0.
 Therefore I assume you want to install NetBSD on it.

Full Installl

a: Set sizes of NetBSD partitions x
b: Use existing partition sizes

We now have your BSD-disklabel partitions as:
 This is your last chance to change them.

    Start  MB   End  MB  Size  MB FS type    Newfs Mount Mount point
    --------- --------- --------- ---------- ----- ----- -----------
 a:       102      1005       903 FFSv1            Yes
 b:         2       101       100 swap
 c:         0         5         6 Whole disk
 d:         0         0         1 Boot partition
 e:         0         0         0 unused
 f:         0         0         0 unused
 g:         0         0         0 unused
 h:         0         0         0 unused
 i:         0         1         2 unknown
 j:         0         0         0 unused
 k: Show all unused partitions
 l: Change input units (sectors/cylinders/MB)
>x: Partition sizes ok

[I set the first partition as mount point '/']

partitions d and i overlap.

 You can either edit the partition table by hand, or give up and return to
the main menu.

[ok, at this point I am guessing on what to do]

[if I set the size of d or i to 0]

     Status: Command failed
    Command: disklabel -w -f /tmp/disktab sd0 'mydisk'
     Hit enter to continue
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
disklabel: partition a: offset past end of unit
disklabel: partition a: partition extends past end of unit
disklabel: partition b: partition extends past end of unit

end of capture


I apologize for being so green about this, but I promise to study once I
get netbsd running :)

Thanks again,
Ryan.


On Thu, 8 Jan 2004, Christopher SEKIYA wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 07, 2004 at 07:47:52PM -0800, systems engineer wrote:
>
> > instinct says flow control.
>
> concur.  when i was preparing the ip20 code for commit, i saw the exact same
> problems and concluded that the zs code was wrong.  the problem went away
> when i swapped my homebuilt cable for a professionally wired DB25-DB25
> null modem adapter plus cable adapters.
>
> > the snapshots are probably too old to have the new gio bus probing stuff,
> > can someone point me at a kernel or should i make my own -current?
>
> the daily -current builds at releng.netbsd.org should work well.
>
> -- Chris
> 	GPG key FEB9DE7F (91AF 4534 4529 4BCC 31A5  938E 023E EEFB FEB9 DE7F)
>