Perry Metzger writes:

>Bill Squier writes:
>> Now for the interesting part.  If I do the install "manually", I seem to
>> clobber the MBR after "installboot".  Below are the steps:

>Just for laughs, please try the following experiment:
>
>1) Create a one cylinder DOS partition at the front of the disk
>2) Make the rest the NetBSD partition
>3) "see what happens"... in particular, I'd like to see the entirety
>   of all the stuff you presented in that last bug report (which was
>   very good and detailed).


Note that if you get the `erase the previous contents of the disk?',
you're going to write the BSD disklabel into the MBR.
Based on the results so far, you may well lose again if that  happens.


If (when?) that fails, please try again with oc# set to skip over the
size of the one-cylinder DOS partition.  That should eliminate the
``Erase the previous contents of the disk?'' message.

Hopefully, once you write the BSD label in the right place,
installlboot will put the bootblocks there rather than into the MBR.


>6) Now the weird part.  I intsall the bootblocks with
>   "/usr/mdec/installboot /usr/mdec/biosboot.sym /dev/rwd0a" and after it
>   completes, I end up with the following ouput from fdisk:

Mmm.  The comments in disklabel say it's only going to write a label
to the MBR if partition A starts at sector 0 of the disk; that means
your installboot is writing there, too. 

With the one-cylinder DOS partition, you probably want to do the
installboot to /dev/rwd0c (or create an `a' partition that starts in
the same place as your /dev/rwd0c partition).

Caveat:  I haven't yet had enuf coffee this AM, and it shows.