Josh Kuperman wrote:

>OK, so I make up my mind to get the distro installed from the CD and
>to get my full disk space. I make a note that at least on Bob Nestor's
>CD to use the /NetBSD-1.5/mac68k/binary director for the install. 
>
>I repartition my hard-drive -- for some reason, I now believe that
>there is a major problem with the partitioning software between "HD SC
>Setup 7.3.5(patched)" and mkfs or newfs software in Sysinstal. Among
>other things it seem that if I so much as open the HD SC Setup program
>on the Mac side after I've successfully created partitions for
>installing, the system or finder get damaged on the MacSide.

Sysinst doesn't use Mkfs.  Your problem with HD SC Setup and MacOS points 
to a problem that seems to be non-NetBSD related.  You may have a 
hardware problem with your disk(s) or with your SCSI chain.

I'd suggest you:

 1) Partition the way you want with HD SC Setup under MacOS.
 2) Reboot into MacOS and check your disk with Disk FirstAid

  then if everything looks OK:

 3) Boot the Installation Kernel for NetBSD.  It's on the CD.
 4) Do the install using the CD - you'll have to change the default 
directory path but
    it does work.  Filenames (and pathnames) are case sensitive under 
UNIX.

As a precaution you might want to install the kern_sbc kernel rather than 
the kern one.

If you install using Sysinst you won't be able to use the MacOS Installer 
application, but you shouldn't need it anyway.  It doesn't recognize the 
filesystem used by Sysinst.  The Booter application still works, but 
usually only on small root filesystems.  For that reason it's almost 
required that you allocate separate root, swap and usr filesystems as a 
minimum. Keep the root filesystem small, probalby no larger than 16Meg. 

*Don't* attempt to repartition the disk with the NetBSD Installation 
Kernel.  It should fail anyway and under 1.5 shouldn't do any disk 
damamge as earlier versions did, but don't tempt fate.  Everything else 
in Sysinst should work for you without a problem assuming you don't have 
a corrupted disk partition table as a result of what you did on the MacOS 
side.

If your disk is corrupted after your repartition under MacOS but before 
you start your NetBSD installation then you have something seriously 
wrong with the hardware or problems on the MacOS side. I'd concentrate on 
resolving those problems before jumping into the NetBSD installation.

-bob