Subject: Re: Putting a disklabel on MSDOS disk (without killing partition)
To: None <johnam@mail.kemper.org, netbsd-help@netbsd.org>
From: Wolfgang Solfrank <ws@tools.de>
List: netbsd-help
Date: 11/21/1998 15:38:40
Hi,

As you don't say what version of NetBSD you are using, I'm assuming for the
following that it's either -current or at least 1.3.2 on an i386.

> He has a 2ndary drive with MSDOS (95) on it using Fat32.

NetBSD has had Fat32 support for more than a year now (albeit early versions
were a bit buggy, esp. when writing to disk).

> I cannot mount it via the mount -t /dev/wd0d /mnt that I am use to.

Hmm, since you said above it's the 2ndary drive, it should probably be
wd1, not wd0.  In addition partition d isn't appropriate here (see below).

(And as an aside, the -t is missing its argument).

> Do I/we need to put a need to put a NetBSD disklabel on it?

No need to disklabel the drive.  NetBSD will construct a fake disklabel
if it doesn't find a valid NetBSD disklabel.

The disk in question will most likely have a DOS partition table (aka MBR).
This partition table can have up to 4 partitions.  The fake disklabel NetBSD
constructs for such disks will have the partitions from the MBR in positions
e, f etc.  You can find out what partitions are in the fake disklabel by
simply calling disklabel wd1.  It should tell you what partitions are found
in the MBR.  Use the appropriate partition in your mount.

If your version of NetBSD is 1.3.2 or earlier, you probably should avoid
writing to the Fat32 partition, so you probably want to use a readonly
mount.  An example mount thus looks like this:
	mount -t msdos -r /dev/wd1e /mnt

Hope this helps.

Ciao,
Wolfgang
-- 
ws@TooLs.DE     (Wolfgang Solfrank, TooLs GmbH) 	+49-228-985800