On 21 Jan 2000, Michael Volland wrote:

> I installed NetBSD on my second Harddisk and it has to share it with
> Linux-Partitions. The pc is an old Pentium I. I got the space for NetBSD
> only about 500 MB large. Yesterday I tried to change this: I deleted
> the primary linux-partition ( for linux NetBSD is on /dev/hdb1 ) and I 
> deleted /dev/hdb2. No matter what I entered into the NetBSD-install-program,
> I could'nt use the hole free space of 1.5 GB and for the 1.5 GB NetBSD sees
> two unused partitions, or disklabels? about 500 MB...
> 
> I read the NetBSD-FAQ about large disks, it did'nt help.
> Is there a way to do it, or do I have to us a hole disk for NetBSD, or what?

There's probably still two partition entries there, which is what's
confusing the installer. You could "escape to shell" from the
installer menu and run "fdisk -i" to fix--make one partiton with the
entire space available of type 169, and zero out the other--then exit
back to the installer. It might also be possible to use the linux
tools to make one partition of the size you want, and then "delete" it
(which evidently doesn't, really).

Once NetBSD is installed, the partition map is only used by the BIOS,
to find the bootblocks, and by NetBSD, to find the disklabel, so you
could simply ignore the partition map and construct a disklabel by
hand, though could be confusing to linux (and to you).
 
> I also appreciate any hints about what to read - slices & disklabels and
> that stuff.

The i386 specific FAQ may provide some insight:
<http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/i386/faq.html>

> I also installed FreeBSD and OpenBSD on two other old pc's, but the disks
> there are no bigger than 500 MB ;-) 

There is absolutely no such limitation on any *BSD. Some older BIOS's
need to have the bootblocks within the first 2 Gb, but that shouldn't
be a problem here.