Subject: Bug in sysinst (1.6.1/i386 boot cd)
To: None <tech-install@netbsd.org>
From: Tobias Klausmann <klausman@schwarzvogel.de>
List: tech-install
Date: 07/26/2003 17:35:37
Hello!

As part of always seeing new stuff, I rotate my play-OS every
couple of months. Yesterday I wanted to nuke my FreeBSD install
in favor of NetBSD 1.6.1. Host is a dual PII/450 with an IDE
disk.

First off, I changed the id of the partition FreeBSD resided on
from FBSDs id to NBSDs.

After the inital questions of bootloader and geometry, sysinst
asked me if I wanted to use the whole disk or only part of it. As
the disk is already partitioned, I selected "Part". sysinst
dutifully selected the right partition, tried to parse the FBSD
disklabel and... segfaulted. 

I didn't expect it to reuse the label (which is incompatible, I
guess), but instead of just throwing a core, it probably should
just have zapped it.

So I used my rescue disk, zeroed the first few blocks of the
partition using dd and restarted the installtion. Everything went
fine.

Because of the utter obscurity, this probably should be fixed or
at least mentioned in the install docs.

Greets,
Tobias

-- 
Thank you for calling  $PROVIDER helpdesk. If your cupholder is
broken, please press 1. If you want an actual knowledgable support
person, please enter the IP representation of a /28 netmask."