Subject: Re: Only One NetBSD Partition Allowed?
To: David Laight <david@l8s.co.uk>
From: Dion van der Grijp <dvdgrijp@mbox3.singnet.com.sg>
List: netbsd-help
Date: 03/21/2004 23:36:07
On Sun, Mar 21, 2004 at 11:43:32AM +0000, David Laight wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 21, 2004 at 06:20:52PM +0800, Dion van der Grijp wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I just tried installing NetBSD 1.6.2 (i386) on a system that already has
> > NetBSD 1.6.1 installed.  That is, I have 1.6.1 in one physical partition,
> > and wanted to use another physical partition for 1.6.2.  However, sysinst
> > did not like the fact that I had defined more than one partition to be
> > of type "NetBSD", and suggested I re-edit the partition table.  When I
> > ignored that and tried to continue, it decided to use one of the two, and
> > it so happens that it chose the one with 1.6.1 - which I do not want to
> > lose (before 1.6.2 is running successfully).  So I aborted the installation.
> > 
> > How do I overcome this?  Can there be only one NetBSD partition?  I was
> > able to install multiple FreeBSDs in different partitions without problems;
> > the active partition was the one that was operative (which to me makes
> > sense).
> 
> You can change the mbr partition type of the old partition to something
> else (other than 169).  Then sysinst and the boot code will only find
> the 1.6.2 partition.  You'll then have two NetBSD disklabels.
> 
> NetBSD current does support multiple installations, and you can use the
> mbr bootselector to select which one to run.  In this case the two
> installations will share the same NetBSD disklabel - the root filesystems
> being different partitions.
> 
> 	David
> 
> -- 
> David Laight: david@l8s.co.uk

That's exactly what I was thinking of doing - but I wasn't sure.  I trust
that changing the sysid (only) to "...something else (other than 169)" will
not have undesirable side-effects.  Thanks, I'll give it a try.

-dvdg