Subject: Re: should sysinst change MBR_PTYPE_386BSD to MBR_PTYPE_NETBSD?
To: David Laight <david@l8s.co.uk>
From: Perry E. Metzger <perry@piermont.com>
List: tech-install
Date: 06/15/2003 17:21:45
David Laight <david@l8s.co.uk> writes:
> > > True. However, if someone were to update their ancient i386 running
> > > 1.3.1 to 2.0 that way, and render it unbootable, it would be an easy
> > > fix to boot from a sysinstall floppy and change the MBR ID.
> > 
> > True enough. They could also put their old kernel in "netbsd.old" as
> > is my usual trick and get things better afterwards. As I said,
> > "whether it is still needed in GENERIC is arguable". I'm not
> > going to yell much about someone removing it.
> 
> That would be unlikely to work - certainly none of the dynamic executables
> will load with the old kernel.

And why is that a problem?

The procedure I always follow is to move the old kernel into
netbsd.old, copy the new kernel into /netbsd, and reboot. If the new
kernel fails to boot because it can't handle the old MBR type, it is
easy enough to boot netbsd.old instead and figure out the problem.

You can't upgrade the executables until you've rebooted with the new
kernel -- or at least, if you try to do that, you'll end up in a world
of hurt because your kernel can't run any of the system programs any
more.


-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry@piermont.com