>>>>> On Tue, 21 Nov 1995, "Eric S. Hvozda" <hvozda@netcom.com> writes:

> On Mon, 20 Nov 1995 16:10:24 CST  Kent Vander Velden wrote:
> > 
> >   I would like to be able to access the win95 partition from NetBSD.  I
> > assume this can be done with a msdosfs mount but if I remember correctly
> > there where problems writing to a msdosfs from NetBSD.  Is this the
> > case any longer?  
> 
> A number of bugs have been fixed with msdosfs, but I haven't really
> hammered it yet (ie I'm still mounting partitions ro).  When I get the 
> chance, I'll have two tar(1)'s write to the partition, that always
> made the bug rear it's ugly head for me.  Bascially YMMV...

I use msdosfs for "light duty" (copying/deleting single files at a time) 
and I have not had a single problem with it.  On the other hand, I too am 
hesitant to really count on it.


> >   A problem that I had when NetBSD was first installed on this computer
> > was that I could not mount the MSDOS drive that was already there.  When
> > I asked about this I was told that I needed to create a NetBSD disklabel
> > even though the entire drive was devoted to MSDOS.  I could not create
> > the partition at that time since it would mean that part of the MSDOS
> > partition would be overwritten.  This is something that would be nice to
> > avoid this time.  How should I prepare the drive?  

If you have the drive now, you could always partition it (with pfdisk) to 
leave a small NetBSD partition.  You could always use this for swap or 
something (if you can spare a few cylinders from the Win95 space).

> There are instructions floating around in the archives from 
> Charles on how to use the 1-N (where N is the SPT) free sectors 
> between the MBR and the beginning of the 1st partition if it's a DOS
> partition.  Boot managers like OS-BS Beta and BootEasy use this space
> as well, Caveat User!  Dunno if the slop space is still there with
> Win95.  pfdisk will be able to tell you...

As I understand it, BTEASY does not use this space.  I believe it only uses 
the MBR sector.  OS-BS does use the space, though I think you can configure 
which sectors it uses.


> >   Also, can one selectively boot between NetBSD and Win95 without using a
> > disk?  Much like the OS/2 boot manager or Linux's Lilo?  
> 
> I use OS-BS 1.35 myself; I like it.  There's a slew of boot managers...

Basically, OS-BS and BTEASY are the biggies.  The OS-BS "beta" version 
supports booting off a 2nd disk, as does BTEASY, but the original OS-BS 
does not.  You could use LILO, I think, but I'm not sure that that would 
have any advantages over the other two.  You could also use the OS/2 or NT 
boot managers if you have them.


Good luck,

Tom Pavel

Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
pavel@slac.stanford.edu                 http://www.slac.stanford.edu/~pavel/