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From: davidj@rahul.net (David Josephson)
Subject: NetBSD Install with DOS Answers
Message-ID: <C5ynu8.D61@rahul.net>
Sender: news@rahul.net (Usenet News)
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Organization: a2i network
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1993 23:56:31 GMT
Lines: 43
This is a post from a Unix newbie who is relatively
familiar with DOS (unfortunately). There have been a lot of
questions that were the same I had when trying to get NetBSD
running on my 486. I've solved most of them, and can offer
some suggestions to go along with the INSTALL_NOTES file
which is mostly correct.
Problem A: messages about bogus partition names, etc.
Cause: When asking where to allocate the remaining available
disk space, it's suggested in INSTALL that you give this to
the /usr directory, which is reasonable enough. But this
causes the install program to complain.
Fix: Type usr rather than /usr. The program supplies the
leading slash (/) and if you type /usr it comes out //usr.
Problem B: Recognizing various disk drives.
Cause: Absent an explicit driver, 386bsd can only find those
drives that your CMOS RAM knows about. If your hard drive
depends for its function on a .SYS driver that's loaded in
CONFIG.SYS, 386bsd and NetBSD won't find it. You can put
the specifics for your drive in the CMOS setup using drive
type 47, 'user specified.'
Problem C: Coexisting with DOS partition on same drive.
Cause: 386bsd installation finds and correctly avoids the
existing DOS partition on the drive, but NetBSD does not.
If you're installing to the entire disk, it's not a problem,
but if you want to install in a partition alongside the DOS
partition (so you can still boot DOS from a hard drive) on
the primary disk, you need to know exactly where the DOS
partition ends.
Fix: Somehow you need to know the exact locations of the DOS
partition. FDISK doesn't tell you. Apparently there are other
programs (PFDISK?) that do, but the 386bsd 'TinyBSD' disk
does figure it out. Install with that kernel, write down the
info it used to allocate its disk space, and use the same info
to install NetBSD on top of this same space.
--
David Josephson <davidj@rahul.net>