>Okay, so you're saying that, in order to do a fresh install of NetBSD on a
>disk, I should do approximately the following:
>
>1) Run pfdisk or fdisk or something, to establish that NetBSD gets all of
>the disk except the first track of the first cylinder, and to find out
>what the MBR geometry is.
>
>2) Run sysinst, and tell it what the MBR geometry is.
>
>If this is true, then why can't sysinst do it itself, correctly?  Sysinst
>does have fdisk functionality.  Shouldn't there be a way to get sysinst to
>write a new MBR that will work nicely with NetBSD?
>
>Sorry if I'm missing something obvious here; I just haven't been able to
>get NetBSD to boot off the hard disk yet, and it seems to me that sysinst
>should be slightly more helpful than it is.

No, I'm not saying that.  Yes, sysinst can fdisk your disk and do all the
work of installing NetBSD.  I have done full installs on disks.  My test
machine was a HP Vectra with a 2.5 G disk.  In one test I did the following:

a) used DOS to put on a DOS MBR.  Use the whole thing for DOS ....

b) Booted NetBSD-1.3 and let sysinst use the geometries it found.

c) Selected the entire disk for NetBSD to use and completed the install.

d) Then NetBSD worked just fine, including having the BIOS boot NetBSD from
the disk.

In other tests I did:

a) Had a DOS/NT written MBR with one partition taken for NT.

b) Let sysinst use the geometries it found.

c) Selected to use only part of the disk.

d) Let sysinst add a MBR partition.

e) Continued with the install and got a working system.

f) Later, I installed OS/BS from NT. 


Currently, sysinst has to guess at the BIOS geometry.  In many cases, an
existing MBR written has enough information to get it correct.  But sysinst
will use the real geometry for things other than the MBR.

Another thing that is required that may not be apparent.  The NetBSD Partition "a"
MUST start at the beginning of the NetBSD MBR partition.  If you edit your
disklabel from sysinst to make it some other way, you will not get an
installation for which the BIOS can boot the kernel from the hard disk.

-- 
Phil Nelson                    NetBSD: http://www.netbsd.org
e-mail: phil@cs.wwu.edu        !gifs: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/gif.html
http://www.cs.wwu.edu/~phil