Hello Gavan!

  GF> "Standard", or "Standard with X" in sysinst, instead
    > of "Custom"...

Ah, so /that's/ where it went!  I'm glad I've learned to do
it manually though, it's given me enough control to spread
NetBSD across two disks in a much more organised fassion
than I have before (see port-i386 archives ;-)

  GF> Your root partition has to be readable by the
    > bootloader, which uses BIOS routines, otherwise it
    > won't be able to load the kernel. I suppose if you can
    > guarantee that the kernel will be in that range, the
    > partition could still be bigger, but I wouldn't
    > recommend that.

The root partition is within the first 1024 cylinders (even
though the 'BIOS-level partition' it's in is not entirely. I
don't know if the firmware of the machine I'm using makes a
difference.

  GF> The actual limit depends on the BIOS.. on newer
    > BIOSes, I think you can have it anywhere within the
    > first 8 gigabytes.

Didn't I just say that? ;-)  I needn't worry about the 8Gb
barrier on this machine yet... it only has a 1.7Gb drive.
Perhaps it's another reason to be wary of ATA drives.  I'm
using what I have to hand.

  GF> Looks fairly sane. / is arguably a little big, but if
    > you're planning on putting a lot in /var, that might
    > not be such a bad thing.

Thanks.  I'm not sure yet just how quickly /var will grow on
this box.  If it's sane I suspect that's more by luck than
good judgement! :-)

  GF> That's right, at least for the i386 port.

Is the same disklabel program used on other ports?  Do the
letter conventions differ much?

Thanks for your feedback, it's appreciated.

Regards,
  - Andy Ball.