The problem that I had was that it never asked the phase about
the fdisk partitions.  It just asked if I wanted to use the
full disk, or the existing partions.  I think I answered "use
existing partitions", but if that's the wrong answer, I
would argue that sysinst should've noticed that there were
other fdisk partitions (not type "unused") and warned me if
it was going to do something to obliterate them (which it did.
After that install, all fdisk-partitions were "unused").

   But anyway.  I reinstalled again, after once again installing
the Compaq Utility partition, and I looked at where it was
and was cautious.  I also didn't tell it to use existing
partitions, and something I did differently caused it to
ask about the fdisk table.  So, it's all good now.  But
I still think this bears investigation.  Being able to
[without warning] overwrite other things on the disk shouldn't
happen, IMHO...

                      - Chris


Aaron J. Grier wrote:
> the partitioning method for i386 is two-staged: there's a four-partition
> fdisk-compatible partition table, and then a NetBSD-specific partition.
> on the i386 platform the NetBSD partition information typically goes
> inside one of the four fdisk partition entries; however, if the disk
> isn't going to be used for anything other than NetBSD, you can skip the
> fdisk-compatible partition, and write only the NetBSD paritition table.
> 
> I agree that it's confusing.  maybe somebody here can explain the
> history or technical reasons why disklabel on i386 can't deal with the
> fdisk partitions directly, and why an adjunct program (fdisk) is
> necessary.