Subject: Re: HELPME ...Installingerror
To: Charles M. Hannum <mycroft@gnu.ai.mit.edu>
From: Ken Hornstein <kenh@entropic.com>
List: netbsd-help
Date: 01/12/1995 12:09:28
>   labeling disk wd1 .... wd1:cannot find label (no disk label)
>   overwrite disk with DOS partition table (y/n) [n] ?
>
>It will only ask that if you screwed up either the size or offset of
>the `NetBSD portion of the disk' that you told the script.
>
>   * If I answer YES than BSD can mount the drive and labels it, BUT I 
>   overwrite my partitontable and makes a partition of 25 M, and destroys the 
>   rest!!
>
>That really is what you told it to do.  But since people don't seem to
>get the idea, I've just changed the message to `Erase the previous
>contents of the disk? [n]:', which is really a lie, but perhaps it
>will get the point across.

In defense of this guy, when you're first starting out, the "overwrite disk
with DOS partition table (y/n) ?" message is not very clear.  In fact, you
could read it one of two ways -

- Hey, there's a DOS partition table on this disk, and I'm going to blow it
  away.  Definately bad.
- Hey, I'm going to overwrite this disk's partition table with my own DOS
  partition table.  Might be bad, might be good.

Believe me, I've done this lots of times.  In fact, I think the majority of
first-time NetBSD installers do this.

It might be useful to say exactly _what_ is wrong with the current partitioning
scheme when disklabel gets to this point.  I submitted a PR a while back for
disklabel to do that (it would show the current values and what they should
have been).  Looking back I see that the patch I submitted had an extra exit()
that was left over from when I was debugging it, but I still think it's worth
looking at.

--Ken