In message <199801211532.QAA06964@cauchy.cs.uni-bonn.de>, you write:
>> Okay, I grabbed all the archives of port-amiga going back to the end of
>> November 1997.  I've not been able to find any postings about why NetBSD
>> would assume that all sd?a partitions are root (/).
> 
> err, no, thats not what I tried to say. Maybe I misunderstood you.
> 
> ONLY root type RDB (0x4e4252207) partitions (and the first one... or was
> it last one.. of them per driver) are translated to the NetBSD "a" partition
> letter.
> ONLY swap type RDB (0x4e4253201) partitions (and the first one... or was
> it last one.. of them per driver) are translated to the NetBSD "b" partition
> letter.

Okay, that makes more sense now.  I guess I just never payed attention
to how I mounted my amigados partitions under NetBSD...  I'm also just
used to UNIX-like OSs labeling the first physical partition of a disk as
partition 'a' (or '1' under Linux) and the moving up from there.  The
glories of our goofy, but wonderful, Amiga hardware =)

Thanks for the clarification.

> This is documented, e.g., in the Amiga specific INSTALL document.  
> 
> if you have a ROOT type RDB parition on a 2nd drive, it will show up as
> "a",  ... but its not so clear which one a loadbsd-booted netbsd kernel
> would choose as root partition.  

--
Michael Parson
News Admin
SMART-NAP