Subject: Re: partition sizes?
To: Space Case <wormey@eskimo.com>
From: Perry E. Metzger <perry@piermont.com>
List: port-i386
Date: 08/17/1998 17:51:54
Space Case writes:
> On Aug 17,  2:20pm, "Perry E. Metzger" wrote:
> >Space Case writes:
> >> So, would something like this work?
> >> 
> >> 1.  100MB  NetBSD root
> >> 2.  100MB  NetBSD swap
> >> 3.  3GB    Win/DOS
> >> 4.  rest   NetBSD usr
> >
> >Well, the only problem there is that NetBSD doesn't yet really have
> >support for handling multiple MBR partitions, so you would have to
> >hand edit the BSD disk label in the first MBR partition to get this
> >right. Other than that, I believe this would work for you just fine.
> 
> OK.  I don't understand the 'multiple MBR partitions' part (indeed,
> I just managed to get this Gateway installed NetBSD-only; I do much
> better on Mac ;), but I'll go do some studying and figure it out...

The MBR is the DOS/PC centric way of partitioning the drive between
operating systems -- it lets you divide the disk in four, and set the
"active" bootable partition.

NetBSD takes an MBR partition and then further divides it with the BSD 
disk label.

However, after boot, NetBSD almost entirely ignores the MBR and only
uses the data it got from the BSD disk label, so you can fake out the
disk label to point at various things "outside" of the NetBSD MBR.

Perry