*BSD News Article 4315


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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!uunet!mcsun!chsun!hslrswi!aut!nbladt
From: nbladt@autelca.ascom.ch (Norbert Bladt)
Subject: Re: HELP: Can't install 386bsd-0.1 into own partition!
Message-ID: <1992Aug31.141335.28601@autelca.ascom.ch>
Keywords: 386BSD
Organization: Ascom Autelca AG, Guemligen, Switzerland
References: <ache.714840717@cpuv1> <ache.714917290@cpuv1> <2252@bigfoot.first.gmd.de> <1992Aug31.062144.12176@rucs2.sunlab.cs.runet.edu> <veit.715259697@du9ds3>
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 14:13:35 GMT
Lines: 44

veit@du9ds3.uni-duisburg.de (Holger Veit) writes:

>In <1992Aug31.062144.12176@rucs2.sunlab.cs.runet.edu> bmyers@rucs2.sunlab.cs.runet.edu (B.Myers) writes:

>[..]
>>Install won't create it's own partition on my machine. Every time I try
>>to install it it tells me I already have it installed and it only
>>asks me if I want to overwrite it. I say yes. Then it says use the 
>>whole disk, and I say no. Then it quits. 
>>Before that it says 0 mb free on disk.
[ text about installing and de-installing 386bsd deleted - NB.]

>Regarding the 0 MB problem: it seems that install want to have contiguous
>free space at the end of the disk, lots of MBs in the middle or at the beginning
>is "not existing".
>Creating a partition with fdisk (as the second partition on the disk, after some
>DOS or OS/2 partition) and changing the ID bit to A5 should make a partition
>386bsd is happy with (should ;-))
I did the following (without fiddling with the partition table entries):

Create a DOS primary partition (with DOS fdisk).
Create a DOS secondary partition and delete it, again.
Boot with the dist.fs floppy disk.
After succesful booting, install.
386BSD will happily use the secondary (now deleted) partition on
the disk for installation if you tell it to.

This happened on a no-name 486/25 with 16 MB RAM and Adaptec 1542B SCSI
controller (plus a CP-3100 100 MB Conner Harddisk).

I don't know whether this just works for SCSI systems, but I doubt it.
The reason why I did it this way was, that I tried to change the
partition ID to A5 but the offsets which were given (about 460 ff.)
must be wrong. I looked at sector 0 on the harddisk (with PC-Tools
edit disk feature) but found the following text in this section of
the bootblock: "No system disk ..."
I didn't want to overwrite this text, although nothing would happen,
it wouldn't have helped, anyway.

Norbert.
-- 
Norbert Bladt, Ascom Autelca AG, Worbstr. 201, CH-3073 Guemligen, Switzerland
Phone: +41 31 999 65 52			FAX: +41 31 999 65 44
Mail: nbladt@autelca.ascom.ch   UUCP: ..!uunet!mcsun!chsun!hslrswi!aut!nbladt