Re: NetBSD install experiences

[Martin Husemann <martin%duskware.de@localhost>]

On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 12:14:52PM -0500, Robert Nestor wrote:
> With GPT, at least on a disk that already has some GPT wedges,
> it seems one selects GPT wedges to ?partition?, not the disk.
> At least it seemed to me that all the existing GPT wedges were
> displayed and I don?t recall seeing an option that allowed me to
> select the raw disk and define or redefine the GPT
> partitions on it.

I understand where this confusion comes from, and it makes the whole process
a bit more complicated.

The problem is that the default kernels all do "auto discovery" for GPT
partitions and (helpfully) create wedge devices (dk0 ... dk$N) for the
partitions. This is quite nice later, as it allows you to attach a USB
disk and just use the partitions.

However, for the installer these are additional disk devices, so it lists
them as potential targets for installation (unless they are used as the
current root filesystem or similar).

That means in a very minimal setup where you boot from an UEFI install
image on USB and you have a target SATA disk that already has some GPT
partitions you would get devices like:

 sd0	the USB stick you booted from
 wd0	the SATA disk
 dk0	some GPT partition on wd0
 dk1	another GPT partition on wd0
 dk2	the EFI boot partition on the USB boot medium
 dk3	the boot/root partition on the USB boot medium (not offered
	by the installer)

in mostly random order.

You actually *can* install to some existing GPT partition, e.g. dk0 or dk1,
and it should just work (but you can not sub-partition dk* devices). The
installer handles this special case.

But you also can select "wd0" as the target and add additional NetBSD GPT
partitions there (if space is available) and then install into those.

I'm thinking about making that list of potential target devices more like
a tree so the selection becomes more obvious.

Martin