On 9/11/97 at 6:15 PM -0700, you wrote:

> You should be able to just run
> 'mount /dev/wd0a /mnt ; mkdir /mnt/usr ; mount /dev/wd0e /mnt/usr'

This worked. However, the problems persist.

I've got a suspicion that there might be something not quite right about
the disk. Before nuking DOS, I ran scandisk and noted that there were lots
of surface errors. Maybe not more than normal, but a reasonable number,
anyway. I had scandisk fix everything it saw wrong, but I don't know if it
did things on a hardware level, or on a FAT table level. If my suspicion
that it fixed things in its FAT table is true, then the bad areas list was
nuked along with the FAT table. But, anyway, I thought it might be good to
fsck the disk. I rebooted, mounted the partitions read-only, and fsck_ffs'd
them, with with and without the prune option. I couldn't figure out how to
get a raw fsck, though. :/

I started to get annoyed with having to boot off the floppy, so I copied
over all the binaries from the RAM disk to wd0a (and wd0e as appropriate)
and rebooted, sans floppy. The boot code started doing its thing, but it
got a "short read" error on the kernel. So, I rebooted with the floppy,
mounted wd0a and wd0e, THEN mounted fd0a on /mnt2, and copied over the
compressed kernel. I rebooted, and the error was the same - "short read."

Oh... Just for kicks, I made sure gzip/gunzip worked on a little test file.
However, it choked when I tried to gunzip /mnt/usr/distrib/kern12G.aa. It
also choked when I tried to gunzip a copy of that file, although cp didn't
choke when copying it.

Lastly, I've played around with the BIOS settings as much as possible,
going from default settings that what I'd call "really minimal, not much
enabled" settings. No change is evident.

So, my questions:

1) Does this sound like there's corruption on the disk?

2) If there's corruption on the disk, how can I do a surface scan with the
tools provided on the boot disk?

3) Is it possible that the drive is being accessed in some sort of
incorrect mode? I don't know enough about hardware to know if this is even
a reasonable possibility. I'm sure I provided correct information to the
installer, near as I can tell.

4) Is there a binary of cksum out there that I could snag, throw on a DOS
disk, and import, so I can check my distrib files from within NetBSD? If
so, how do I mount a DOS floppy? I might be able to figure it out, but with
my luck, I'll simply end up having to ask anyway. :/ My brain only seems
partially functional lately. Too much radiation from these monitors, I
think.

5) Is there anything I can test that I haven't mentioned? (That is,
anything I haven't mentioned, and thus haven't thought of, given that I've
spewed forth just about everything I've tried.)

Thanks (again!) in advance for the help.

--
        Mason Loring Bliss    /\    mason@acheron.middleboro.ma.us
     www.webtrek.com/mason   /()\   awake ? sleep() : dream();
<barbaric>YAWP!</barbaric>  /    \  Squeak to me of love!