On Sun, 25 Nov 2007 09:46:14 -0800 (PST)
Cem Kayali <cemkayali@eticaret.com.tr> wrote:

> 
> 
> 
> Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> > 
> > On Sun, 25 Nov 2007 03:07:37 -0800 (PST)
> > Cem Kayali <cemkayali@eticaret.com.tr> wrote:
> > 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> James Hartley wrote:
> >> > 
> >> > I have searched some, but surprisingly little comes up.
> >> > 
> >> > What is required to ensure that the MBR is preserved when
> >> > installing 4.0_RC4 to an empty partition on a system already
> >> > with an operating system installed?
> >> > 
> >> > Thanks for any insight shared.
> >> > 
> >> > 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> Hi,
> >> 
> >> On my previous notebook, there were Windows recovery on first
> >> partition, Windows XP on second one and there was third partition
> >> for personal data.
> >> 
> >> I used GPARTED to create fourth partition by splitting third one to
> >> two. Then, i installed NetBSD onto third one and used GAG to
> >> create a new boot/mbr. It was easier to install GAG then GRUB, and
> >> also it preserved previous settings too... Fourth partition had
> >> fat32 format, so that windows and netbsd could both write data on
> >> it (data sharing).
> > 
> > I've generally done things that way, too, though whether or not I
> > spend space on the FAT32 partition depends on what I might want to
> > share -- often, a remote file system is easier. 
> > 
> > In the past, I used Partition Magic under Windows to repartition the
> > disk.  Today, I'm more likely to boot an Ubuntu LiveCD and use its
> > partition editor.  (Note: the last few times I've done that, Vista
> > was unhappy about something and insisted on scanning the disk.  No
> > big deal, and it doesn't take that long, but I'd recommend booting
> > Windows after the repartition and before installing NetBSD.)
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
> Just a note... Ubuntu uses GPARTED as partition editor. You can get
> it as seperate iso file from http://gparted.sourceforge.net
> 

Sure, but I have Ubuntu disks lying around anyway...  (I hadn't
realized that there's a separate boot CD image for just gparted, but
it's undoubtedly some Linux distro under the hood anyway.)

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb