Re: Use of disklabel, MBR and GPT

[Rocky Hotas <rockyhotas%firemail.cc@localhost>]

On ott 16 12:03, Rocky Hotas wrote:
> When the machine is booted with NetBSD, disklabel is the only way
NetBSD                      
> looks at the disk, the *entire* disk; MBR in this case is not
considered                      
> at all.                      
                      
Obviously, disklabel creates custom partitions only in the portion of
the disk which is related to NetBSD, the only one where it is intended
to act. It leaves unchanged any other area of the disk. If MBR did not
exist, the extension of disklabel partitions `a', `b', `e', `f', etc.
could span the whole disk, and in fact this is the case of my last
example, where disklabel only is used, without MBR.
 
In a similar way, when MBR is used from other OSs, it is intended to
create and modify all the primary partitions, except the one where
NetBSD is installed (unless a full disk wipe must be performed): in
other words, it is indended to modify the disk, except the portion
used by NetBSD. This way, NetBSD can coexist with a PC/IBM,
DOS-compatible system.