Subject: Finally(?) sorted out my MS-DOS/NetBSD drive
To: None <current-users@netbsd.org, port-i386@netbsd.org>
From: Ian Fitchet <I.D.Fitchet@fulcrum.co.uk>
List: current-users
Date: 10/31/1994 09:54:39
Hi,

	Many thanks to those who replied to my previous musings.
After some lucky guesswork I have finally gotten MS-DOS(*) and NetBSD
to reside on the same drive.

	There are three issues that I don't recall seeing addressed in
official documentation.  I don't claim to understand them, things just
work now...

1.  Declare the MS-DOS partition in the disklabel including the sector
offset reported by fips/pfdisk.  I should add here that the
declarations in the disklabel should be in MS-DOS speak, ie <=1024 cyl
and whatever combination of tracks/cyl, sectors/track to make up for
it.

 If I didn't declare it then NetBSD would merrily stamp it's partition
table all over MS-DOS's rendering MS-DOS invisible.  Even after
declaring the MS-DOS partition, I still had NetBSD stamping over
MS-DOS's partition table until I added the offset.

2.  When you newfs the NetBSD partition, I got fsck errors unless you
`newfs -t 16 <device>'.  ie newfs was reading the disklabel, seeing 32
and using it (not realising it couldn't?!?).

Presumably newfs has the limit of 16 physical heads hardwired in as
fsck would (almost) reliably report `PARTIALLY ALLOCATED INODE'.  But
whatever, it would invariably fail.

3.  If trying to use the whole of the c partition, then don't.  Use
all but the last block, otherwise, again, more fsck errors.



 So, 300MB, better off, now (room for X11R6/XFree86??) but not much
the wiser.

(*) I say gotten them both to reside, I made the rather foolish
mistake of upgrading my BIOS which now causes HIMEM.SYS (amongst
others) to hang...

Cheers,

	Ian

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      Ian Fitchet			I.D.Fitchet@fulcrum.co.uk
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