On Thu, 16 Oct 1997 14:31:25 -0400,
Paul Bickford <bickford@jimmy.harvard.edu> writes:


[message re-sent 'cause I'm not sure if the first one made it out...]
>
>At 10:37 AM 10/16/97 +0100, Reini (Reinhold Huber) wrote:


>>  - type 
>>
>>     dd if=32M-diskimage of=sdXc

This is the problem. On NetBSD/i386 (and maybe OpenBSD/i386, unless
they've changed it) that last phrase should be

	of=/dev/sdXd

Note the 'd' as well as the preceding /dev/.

>This simply creates a new (big) file called "sd1c". I assumed that I should

>try a command to the effect of:
>        dd if=32M-diskimage of=/dev/sd1c
>
>However, when I try that (or "/dev/rsd1c"), I get the following error:
>        "device not configured"
>
>So, I re-labeled the disk so that the "a" partition spans the entire disk,
>removed all the other partitions, and lastly "newfs /dev/sd1a".
>
>Then, I:
>        dd if=32M-diskimage of=/dev/sd1a
>
>and get no errors.

But you need to dd the partition onto the `whole disk' partition.
On NetBSD/i386, that's the d partition. You should really try

        dd if=32M-diskimage of=/dev/rsd1d

If that doesn't work there's something wrong with your drive.  
(The BSD 'a' partition may well skip the MBR area and the BIOS
bootblock.  It depends on how you labelled your disk.)

I'm a bit puzzled, I'm sure I mentioned using `whole disk' partition
in an earlier message, and also pointed out that it was /dev/???d on
NetBSD/i386, and /dev/???c on many other Unix platforms.  (I guess on
Linux it's /dev/sdN, and I have no clue about systems with `disk
slices'.)