Jerry VanBrimmer <jevb.1@runbox.com> writes:

> On Mon, Aug 22, 2005 at 09:08:53PM +0100, David Laight wrote:
>> On Mon, Aug 22, 2005 at 08:50:02AM -0700, Jerry VanBrimmer wrote:
>> > 
>> > hdb11 is 17GB. Will sysinst see it as it's formatted now, in ext3? Or
>> > should I reformat that partition before I start the install?
>> 
>> NetBSD (and hence sysinst) uses its own disklabel to split a single
>> mbr/bios partition into multiple (NetBSD) partitions and hence filesystems.
>> The disklabel contains absolute sector numbers - so can reference any
>> part of the disk.  It is saved at the start of the netbsd mbr partition.
>
> Okay, I got all the way up to where sysinst asked if I wanted to make
> the NetBSD partition active. I answered 'Yes', but it never set it
> active. And, in the partition options pop-up menu, I cannot even select
> the Set Active option. I don't *think* I did anything wrong, so all I
> can think of is that sysinst won't allow a partition on an extended
> partition to be set active. Any ideas?

This sounds OK for me, I expected the same behaviour.

<tedious>
IBM-compatible PCs HDDs has 4 primary partitions. The support
of different OSes on the same HDD was established like rule:
"One OS = one primary partition".
If we drop the constrain of 1024 cylinders, we can boot OS from
any primary partition via active flag (we can set it via MS-DOS fdisk
even).
How it works? BIOS finds first HDD (C:), and read MBR.
MBR's boot loader checks active flag and read the PBR from
active primary partition.
PBR boots OS.
</tedious>

hdb11 has no PBR and can't boot OS. End of story.

I don't know how grub works, I know only lilo. Lilo can boot
linux from hdb11. Lilo is "extended" boot loader but you are
hardwired to it. If you loose it you could not load _any_ OS
from your HDDs.

<FWIW>
The golden rules for lilo follows:
1) Never install lilo into MBR if you plan to use another OS on
the same HDD.
2) MS OSes are addicted via first primary partition so install
them first if you use them.
3) Always install lilo into primary partition (hda1, hda2, hda3, hda4).
4) Always use the "lilo infected" primary partition for /<root> fs.
It could be small enough.
5) Always install other OSes into primary partitions. If you
exhaust 4 on the "disk C", insert another disk and use its
pramary partitions.
</FWIW>

These rules allow you to drop any OS and any boot loader and boot
any OS which stays on that disk.

If you have no plan to run many OSes you can just ignore those
rules. Otherwise, I suggest the full reinstallation.

I'm lazy so I understand that my suggestion is more tedious than
this letter reading. :)

HTH,
-- 
= Alexey G. Khramkov (agkhram) @ Infotech <agkhram{at}mercdev{dot}com> =
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