Subject: mbrlabel, disklabel, and MSDOS drives with extended partitions
To: None <netbsd-help@netbsd.org>
From: None <lainestump@rcn.com>
List: netbsd-help
Date: 07/23/2001 00:34:00
I have an "all DOS" disk that has a primary FAT32 partition, and an
extended partition with two FAT32's and an NTFS. I want to mount all
the partitions on this disk when I plug it into a NetBSD machine
(booting from a different disk). The "fake disklabel" that's generated
in-kernel by NetBSD shows only the primary partition. So I tried to
use mbrlabel - it shows all the partitions, but won't write them to
the disk. Then I looked back into the mailing list and found that it
*shouldn't* write them to the disk, because that will overwrite the
existing MBR code on the drive (in the case that it doesn't have a
NetBSD MBR, I guess, which is the case here).
So: 1) Why doesn't the fake disklabel that's generated have all the
stuff that mbrlabel sees? and 2) Since it doesn't, how do I get all
the partitions mounted without writing a disklabel to the disk (since
that will apparently screw up the boot record for the existing OS,
right?)