Dan Hastings wrote:

[ ..... ]
> I could have done... I was in the process of adding another 100Mb
> partition to netbsd last night. Unfortunately the end result was to
> break the lot. :(
> 
> I couldn't find what I had done with the ch_part program to set
> partition IDs to make TOS ignore the partition, so I tried to make

I think 'RAW' was the solution.

> the change with diamond edge... big mistake. Edge generously reset
> the partition IDs to either GEM or BGM when I told it to install my
> changes, and then did something unknown - maybe initialised their type
> to TOS or something. Anyway, even when I set them back to NBR/NBS/NBU
> netbsd won#t boot anymore. :( COmplains about somekind of partition
> type error. I can't recall the exact message, but the end result is
> it can't find /root to mount it.

This message might be important. If I know what it is, I can look it up
in the source. The worst the program could have done is the creation of
a GEM filesystem. Just hope it only scrambled the bootblock.

> 
> Is there a way to reinitialise the partitions to netbsd? Maybe need
> to rewrite the superblocks? I'm fairly sure the data is all still there
> since I told edge to install only and not install & rebuild (which is
> supposed to preserve data).
> 
> I guess I'll try bootingfrom floppy and fsck'ing them. If all else
> fails I could maybe scrap the lot and install 1.2 from scratch but I'd
> really like to rescue the data from my /usr partition. Still crossed
> fingers and hope I guess. ;)

Booting from the install floppies should be the key here. First set
the partition id of the partition that carried your root-filesystem to
NBR (this can be done with edahdi when booting the 1.2 installer).
Try to fsck the root filesystem. If it complains about the superblock,
try using an alternate like: 'fsck_ffs -b 32 /dev/......'
> 
> Out of interest, what is the procedure to give netbsd a new /local
> partition? My method was (a) clear all data from partition, (b) set
> partition type to NBU (should be NBU or maybe NBL?) this is where it
> went wrong *grin* (c) boot netbsd and then run 'newfs /dev/sd0d' and
> then mount using mount_ffs?

(a) is not needed. The partition id should be NBU. newfs the partition
added (not always /dev/sd0d !) and then mount it.

Leo.