Re: Formatting a second drive

[mparson%smartnap.com@localhost]

In message <199801211040.LAA06590%cauchy.cs.uni-bonn.de@localhost>, you write:
>> In message <6a36s3$ed$1%colwyn.owl.de@localhost>, you write:
>>> In article 
>>> <Pine.NEB.3.96.980120163753.8395A-100000%thecreation.com@localhost>,
>>> "Eric K. Miller" <emiller%thecreation.com@localhost> writes:
>>>> #thecreation:/home/emiller> newfs /dev/sd1a
>>>> newfs: /dev/sd1a: Device not configured
>>> "/dev/sd1a" would be a ROOT partition on the second drive. And I doubt
>>> you want to have another root partition.
>> 
>> /dev/sd1a would be the first partition on the second drive, nothing 
>> dictates that the first partition of a drive has to be a 'root' (/) 
>> partition.
> 
> Oh yes, you're wrong.
> 
> Look up the mailing list archives... I posted to complete explanation some 2 
> weeks ago.

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 (/).

If it wouldn't be too much trouble, I would be interested in reading up
on why this is the case.  The way I understood things was that NetBSD looked
at the dostype and made decisions based on the information that I put into
HDToolBox.  

I have two hard drives in my Amiga setup.  The first drive (sd1) is
dedicated to AmigaDOS, the second (sd2) is dedicated to NetBSD-Amiga.
As far as I can tell, NetBSD (1.0, 1.1, and now 1.2) has never tried to
boot off sd1a, it has always just gone to sd2a, just like I would expect
based on the dostype from HDToolBox.  I boot into NetBSD using loadbsd.

This is not a flame, just an honest question.

--
Michael Parson
News Admin
SMART-NAP