On Jan 28, Claude Marinier wrote
> Hi,
> 
> During upgrade to NetBSD 1.3.3 (i386), soon after the start, when it has
> had a look at the disk, sysinst puts up one of those boxes framed with
> "*". The frame partially obscures a message; the part I can see says:
> 
>     *****ld-NetBSD or FreeBSD. See installboot(8).
>         *
>         *
> 
> This appears to be a reference to the partition ID in the MBR. I checked
> with fdisk. The first three partition are marked as "unused"; the third
> has a sysid of 165 and flag value of 0x80. I believe that this means
> NetBSD/active.

Yes, for all is OK.

> 
> I can boot the system with the boot code on the sysinst floppy but not
> directly, i.e. when I remove the floppy, the system hangs before booting.
> While booting, the system complains about the sysid just before the first
> kernel messages. I have tried "fdisk -i" and "fdisk -u"; I have also done
> (from /usr/mdec) "installboot biosboot.sym /dev/rwd0a". No progress. I did
> the installboot on the live system, should I do it from a floppy boot?

Did installboot give you an error message ? if not, all should be OK.

> 
> What is the correct sysid for NetBSD? I get the impression it has changed.

Yes it has changed, it's now 169. But the new kernel and boot block understand
the old partition ID. 

May be that the boot sector of the disk is dead. Could you try to boot from a
DOS floppy and type 'fdisk /mbr' ? 

--
Manuel Bouyer, LIP6, Universite Paris VI.           Manuel.Bouyer@lip6.fr
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