On Wed, 8 Aug 2001, David Walker wrote:

> So can I presume if I see these entries under disklabel wd0 that they are
> mounted?

Nope.  All that tells you is that they should be mountable (impossible to
mount without an entry).  Type "mount" to see a list of what is currently
mounted.  Type "mount <dev> <path>" to mount device <dev> at path <path>
(which should be an existing empty directory).

> Or is it more correct to say that NetBSD automatically labels its own slices
> but I may have to mount them especially during install.

The installer (sysinst) automatically setup the disklabel for you with the
necessary slices (it was one of the steps, it probably asked you how big
you wanted each slice - just before the "last warning - about to write
change" message).  You have to mount a slice manually whenever you want to
use it and it hasn't been mounted by some other program.  Under normal
day-to-day use NetBSD is configured to automatically mount the partitions
it needs, but there are cases when you'd have to mount a partition (i.e.
during install, adding a drive, or accessing a floppy disk or CDROM).

> If I have anything other than the NetBSD slices and I want NetBSD to
> recognise them I must label them (disklabel) and then they will appear as
> another slice.

Yes, I think so.  It would be nice if sysinst added the extra slices for
you (I'm actually surprised it didn't).  I think its because the typical
situation is to use a completely seperate drive for NetBSD.  If a drive
has no netbsd partition, NetBSD will use a "fake disklabel" so you can
access your dos partitions etc. without having to write a disklabel to the
drive.  If a drive has a NetBSD partition, NetBSD expects to find a
disklabel at the beginning of it.

> Can I presume if cd /dev works that wd0a is already mounted?

Nope.  As I said before, when booting from floppy, /dev isn't on your
hard-drive, its part of the filesystem on the floppy disk (because you
need /dev/console to boot, and you want to be able to boot entirely from
the floppy disk).  Normally when booting from floppy, the hard-drive is
mounted under /mnt, so the "dev" directory on the hard-drive would be
accessed by "cd /mnt/dev".

> Would it be better if I posted these questions to the list? I don't want to
> annoy others including you.

I've CC'd this message to the netbsd-help list incase others might benefit
from it.  netbsd-help is probably the best place for this discussion
(tech-net and port-i386 are usually assume a little more experience, where
netbsd-help is largely for new users).  Just keep CC'ing netbsd-help when
you respond, that way if I don't know the answer (or I give you bad
advice, or I am too slow, or just don't feel like responding <grin>)
someone else can jump in.  As long as you don't cross-post (post the same
question to many lists), you aren't likely to annoy anyone with your
questions <grin>.  We were all new to NetBSD sometime :)
	Rick