> It is interruptable.  I can <ctrl>-c out of it and my machine is no worse
> for the wear.

Off hand I can't think where the loop would be.  The only likely one
is in the kernel trying to follow the extended partition chain.
(But I don't think that is interruptable, and should have a check that
the sector number is increasing_.

Some freebsd disklabels have been known to cause disklable to core dump.
Maybe there is something odd in sector 2...
 
> > > Can anyone offer any suggestions on how to fix this or how to futher
> > > diagnose the problem?
> >
> > What does NetBSDs fdisk say about wd0?
> > Depending on the version (I've forgotten when 1.6U was) one or more -v
> > will give more info.
> 
> fdisk displayed the partition table correctly.  I can't get to the machine
> at the moment, so I can't paste it in here, but it did show the correct
> table.

You need 'fdisk -vvv sd0' to get all the info displayed.

> > If you run current (probably later than 1.6U) the kernel ought to have
> > code to generate a label from the extended partition list.
> 
> Hmmm... Well, I've grabbed -current source.  I'll update tonight.  Will
> the system automatically see this label, or do I have to write it to the
> disk?

The kernel will try to read a label from a variety of places:
	sector 1 of a type 169 (NetBSD) partition
	sector 1 of a type 165 (FreeBSD) partition
	sector 1 of the disk
failing that it will create one containing the partitions from the MBR
and extended partition list.
With current the netbsd partition can be an extended partition - although
you might fail to boot that with grub.


	David

-- 
David Laight: david@l8s.co.uk