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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!agate!dog.ee.lbl.gov!hellgate.utah.edu!cc.usu.edu!ivie From: ivie@cc.usu.edu Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Re: [NetBSD] installing with DOS Message-ID: <1993May31.094722.68786@cc.usu.edu> Date: 31 May 93 09:47:22 MDT References: <C7vu5z.EtM@cvt.stuba.cs> <1ud4r6$l80@stimpy.css.itd.umich.edu> Organization: Utah State University Lines: 62 In article <1ud4r6$l80@stimpy.css.itd.umich.edu>, altitude@css.itd.umich.edu (Alexander King Tang) writes: > Valo Roman (valo@cvtstu.cvt.stuba.cs) wrote: > : Because when I finished the base installation, my dos partition gone away !!! > : Running fdisk again didn't help, it told me that there isn't enough space to > : create dos partition. > > table. I said NO this time. When it was supposed to reboot off the hard > drive, it booted off my dos partition, and the non-dos partition wasn'te even > in fdisk, so I couldn't make it active. I did it again (Take 3) I did 1 meg > dos, 2 meg offset, and ok to overwrite dos partition table. Once again, my > dos partition is gone. What happened???? Thanx..alex... I spent about four hours a couple of weekends ago getting NetBSD and DOS to live together. When you tell NetBSD to not overwrite the DOS partition, it puts the A5 partition-type marker in the partition table, but leaves the rest of the partition entries zero. I wound up doing the following: - Start with DOS only on the drive, at the _end_ of the drive. - Using Norton, suck the DOS boot block and partition table from track 0 into a file. - Install NetBSD on the first part of the hard drive, letting it store its bootblock in block 0. - Using Norton, suck the bootblock off and stash it in a file. - Copy the DOS bootblock that you stashed back onto the harddrive using Norton. - Hand-edit the partition table to add the NetBSD partition. Here comes the fun part: - Copy the NetBSD boot block that you stashed in a file onto the harddisk in the DOS partition; in other words, make a DOS file on the hard disk that contains the NetBSD boot block. - Using Norton and a calculator, locate the physical address (cylinder, head, sector) of the file. - Using Norton, build a bogus one-sector partition that points at the DOS file. - Of course, make the DOS file containing the NetBSD boot block System, Hidden, and Read-Only. When you boot the bogus partition, it will read the NetBSD boot block from the DOS file and jump to it. The boot block will then read block 0 from the hard disk, find the NetBSD partition, and boot it. Not much fun, but it works... And with just a few hours more, I was able to make the boot block survive the Windows/NT installation procedure. Roger "There must be a better way" Ivie ivie@cc.usu.edu