Subject: Re: New system: can NetBSD live outside of first 8GB of disk?
To: Steven Grunza <steven_grunza@ieee.org>
From: Giles Lean <giles@nemeton.com.au>
List: port-i386
Date: 02/25/2000 03:16:53
On Thu, 24 Feb 2000 09:53:39 -0500  Steven Grunza wrote:

> 2)  The IT department put Windows98 on the first 9GB of the disk, leaving
> 4GB free for NetBSD.  I had asked them to put it on the first 7GB, leaving
> 6GB free for NetBSD but that didn't happen.  Can NetBSD boot without having
> any partitions in the first 8GB of the disk?

If you can't make it boot any other way you can always use a floppy
disk with bootblocks and a kernel configured for 'root on wd0a'.

My preferred solution when dealing with corporate IT departments is to
use a second drive, so they get one drive and I get one.  I leave
their disk as wd0 and boot from a diskette with custom boot blocks, so
I don't even put a boot selector on "their" disk.

Regards,

Giles