*BSD News Article 6282


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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!uwm.edu!caen!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!ira.uka.de!rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!stepsun.uni-kl.de!sun.rhrk.uni-kl.de!sun.rhrk.uni-kl.de!andrick
From: andrick@sun.rhrk.uni-kl.de (Ulf Andrick [Biologie])
Subject: Re: Mtools to manipulate C: (386BSD)
Message-ID: <1992Oct9.152439.24203@rhrk.uni-kl.de>
Sender: news@rhrk.uni-kl.de
Organization: University of Kaiserslautern, Germany
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4
References: <1992Oct6.015744.10034@rhrk.uni-kl.de>
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 15:24:39 GMT
Lines: 42

andrick@sun.rhrk.uni-kl.de (Ulf Andrick [Biologie]) writes:
: In order to get mdir to work I recompiled it. After that I was
: able to do mdir A: and mdir B: successfully, but mdir C: still
: doesn't work, though I set up a partition wd0d via disklabel,
: which should correspond to my MS-DOS partition, which is the
: first on the disc. My DOS partition table says that the
: partition begins with offset 35 (2nd track) and I tried that as offset 
: for the wd0d partion as well as 0. But the result is always mdir
: complaining that it can't initialise the disc and suspecting it
: is a non-MS-DOS disc. Apparently, my recompilation was in so
: far successful, as there isn't a message about overlapping
: with active partitions anymore. Before, it probably had used wd0c, 
: which comprises both of my BSD partitions.
: 

The problem is solved, mdir c: now shows me the contents of my
DOS partition on hard disc. Thanks to Warren Toomey.

In fact, it is not necessary to change the disklabel in any
way. As mentioned somewhere else in the group, /dev/rwd0d
always refers to the whole disc. (Are there any other
partitions preconfigured that way?) What you have to do is to
tell Mtools at which offset the DOS partition can be found.
There seems to be a general rule that even if the DOS partition
is first on the disc, the whole first track is not used by
MS-DOS (except for the boot sector containing master boot and
partition table). The offset can be specified in Mtools' devices.c, 
then recompile. My problem was that I didn't see that this offset
is in bytes, not in sectors. I can send my devices.c if there
is some interest, I haven't it with me at the moment.

Now, another question: My DOS partition was first on my disc
when I installed 386BSD. Where is the disc label of my disc?
Would creating a label newly on a disc which has a DOS 
partition at its beginning destroy DOS information? Where
would it be located?

--
Ulf R. Andrick                                andrick@rhrk.uni-kl.de
FB Biologie - Tierphysiologie
Universitaet                             Was du nicht selber weiszt, 
D-W 6750 Kaiserslautern       das muszt du dir erklaeren (Tegtmeier)