On Thu, 19 Feb 1998, STEVE LUMOS wrote:

> I'm trying to install NetBSD 1.3 to the second partition of a 2GB disk
> in a really old Gateway.  Since the BIOS does not support LBA, I had to
> install this "ONTRACK drive overlay" thing.  Going through the process
> to boot from a floppy, and then running pfdisk, I made the following
> paritions:
> 
> 1    7    0    511    WinNT
> 2    65   512  1021   BSD
> 
> The disk geometry is 1022 64 63 LBA, 4092 16 63 real.
> 
> I have NT installed on the first partition, an action that I would very
> much like not to repeat.  When I boot the NetBSD install floppy (through
> the overlay thing, but I suspect that doesn't matter), sysinst says that
> the "BIOS" geometry is 1024 16 63 (meaning that it is kicking the
> overlay thing out of memory?).  So I set this to 1022 64 63 and
> continue.

How are you booting the install floppy "through the overlay thing"?

My experience with ONTRACK was VERY VERY frustrating.

> The problem is that when sysinst gets around to partitioning the disk,
> it claims that there is only one partition (0-4092).  I suspect that
> this is because when the overlay thing is in memory, the partition table
> is at a different location than when it is not in memory (based on my
> experience with pfdisk when I forget and boot directly from the floppy).
> 
> I'm affraid to edit the partition table with sysinst and overwrite
> something that isn't the partition table.  I didn't see any mention of
> these overlay things in the install doc, so I'm wondering if anybody
> knows of a workaround.  

All I can think to do is use pfdisk from a floppy, and make an overlapping
partition. I'm not sure if you CAN do this....

I never got NetBSD to get along w/ ONTRACK. All the install utils wanted
to talk directly to the disk, not through the ONTRACK drivers (probably
since I bet they only work under DOS :-) .

Unfortunatly I don't think there's much you can do to make it work w/o
re-installing. The killer is that the NetBSD partition is above the 1 GB
boundry, and so you can't harddisk boot into NetBSD, even if you hacked on
the partition table.

Note: for the following idea to work, WinNT needs to be able to deal with
the whole disk w/o ONTRACK. Maybe a BIOS upgrade? Either get a new BIOS
from the MB maker, or I've seen BIOS add-ins at FRY's which should work.
(*)

One thing which might work, if you could get another drive for a little
bit, would be to

0) Kill ONTRACK, and make a BIOS partition which will cover where NT is
now.

1) make an extended DOS partition in the upper part of the disk (say the
top 400 MB).

2) copy stuff to the 400 MB partition

3) If NT partitions can be shrunk, shrink the NT partition to 600 MB (1 GB
- 400 MB). If not, copy stuff off, and re-generate the partition.

4) Put NetBSD in the middle 1GB.

So the partitions will be

WinNT
NetBSD		<- 1GB barier is in here.
Extra WinNT

Actually, if you could shrink the NT partition ANY, and get your NetBSD
"a" partition in the first 1024 cylinders, then you're fine. The BIOS
needs to be able to read the kernel, but then NetBSD can see the whole
disk.

Good Luck!

Take care,

Bill

(*) The problem with ONTRACK is that it sticks its code in the begining of
the disk. So the begining of the disk with ONTRACK around is not the same
sector as without it. With all the other mumbo jumbo I've seen to get
around silly BIOS limits (like BIOS PROM add-ins), the begining of the
disk doesn't move. The length of that first track changes, but sector 0 is
the same.