Subject: Re: BIOS / pfdisk / sysinst glitches ?
To: None <rvb@sicily.odyssey.cs.cmu.edu>
From: Perry E. Metzger <perry@piermont.com>
List: port-i386
Date: 07/16/1998 00:55:38
rvb@sicily.odyssey.cs.cmu.edu writes:
> 
> HEADS UP!! IMPORTANT!! READ THIS!!  and OPINIONS SOLICITED!!
> HEADS UP!! IMPORTANT!! READ THIS!!  and OPINIONS SOLICITED!!
> 
> I did battle with sysinst recently, setting up a few new machines with
> a preexisting win 95 partition.  I blew away win 95 and the other MBR
> parititions.  This happens IF YOU SET THE BIOS GEOMETRY.  DO NOT SET
> THE BIOS GEOMETRY using a existing install floppy or -current, unless
> you want the whole disk for NetBSD.  I will commit the fix for this on
> Friday to -current.  NOTE: SET BIOS GEOMETRY is an menu that you can
> skip, so skip it if you have other OSs on your disk.

Was this in -current, or in 1.3, or in 1.3.2?

> NOW: OPINIONS SOLICITED:
> 1. I don't think that sysinst should be allowed to change an existing
>    MBR record unless the MBR record is NetBSD or is empty.  This
>    should protect niave users -- whom sysinst is designed for.  If
>    you need to rearrange your MBR -- use fdisk once you are installed.

Well, it shouldn't be able to alter the basic MBR information, but
changing the active partition, or setting one of the partitions as
NetBSD, is totally normal.

Perry