> But the invalid
> partition table message can come from bad fdisk partitions too. What does
> fdisk and disklabel -r say for your disk?

Sysinst (1.4/i386) wrote bad CHS numbers for end of partition
to my partition table:

NetBSD disklabel disk geometry:
cylinders: 4092 heads: 16 sectors/track: 63 (1008 sectors/cylinder)

BIOS disk geometry:
cylinders: 1022 heads: 64 sectors/track: 63 (4032 sectors/cylinder)

Partition table:
0: sysid 6 (Primary 'big' DOS, 16-bit FAT (> 32MB))
    start 4032, size 1003968 (490 MB), flag 0x0
        beg: cylinder    1, head   0, sector  1
        end: cylinder  250, head   0, sector  1    <---------<<
1: sysid 169 (NetBSD)
    start 1008000, size 3112704 (1519 MB), flag 0x80
        beg: cylinder  250, head   0, sector  1
        end: cylinder 1022, head   0, sector  1    <---------<<
2: <UNUSED>
3: <UNUSED>

If I set the same logical sizes with 'fdisk -u', CHS numbers are computed
correctly:

NetBSD disklabel disk geometry:
cylinders: 4092 heads: 16 sectors/track: 63 (1008 sectors/cylinder)

BIOS disk geometry:
cylinders: 1022 heads: 64 sectors/track: 63 (4032 sectors/cylinder)

Partition table:
0: sysid 6 (Primary 'big' DOS, 16-bit FAT (> 32MB))
    start 4032, size 1003968 (490 MB), flag 0x0
        beg: cylinder    1, head   0, sector  1
        end: cylinder  249, head  63, sector 63
1: sysid 169 (NetBSD)
    start 1008000, size 3112704 (1519 MB), flag 0x80
        beg: cylinder  250, head   0, sector  1
        end: cylinder 1021, head  63, sector 63
2: <UNUSED>
3: <UNUSED>

-- 
Zdenek Salvet                                              salvet@ics.muni.cz 
Ustav vypocetni techniky Masarykovy univerzity, Brno
tel.: ++420-5-41 512 257                           Fax: ++420-5-41 212 747
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           If God had meant for us to be in the Army,
         we would have been born with green, baggy skin.