On Thu, 23 Jul 1998, El JoPe Magnifico wrote:

> How does the Installer determine what the NetBSD root parition is?

Basically, the first partition who's type is "Unix root" or "Unix root &
usr" is assigned to the "a" partition.  In this case, "first" does not
mean "closest to cylinder 0" but means "earliest in the partition map".
(Of course, many partitioning utilities will sort things so that these
both come up with the same result.)

> The reason I ask, is that I'm experimenting with both Linux and NetBSD
> on my Mac, which naturally involves installing a filesystem for each.
> But my Linux root partition comes earlier than my NetBSD root partition,
> and is being picked up by the Installer as the root partition it should
> try to mount, which of course bombs the Installer.  Also, dunno if the
> Booter has this same problem, since it can't get any farther than it
> currently does without something installed.

Yep - you'll have the same problem in the booter.

> Switching positions of the Linux and BSD partitions (besides being a bit 
> of a pain) might create more problems than it solves - Linux booter could
> fall into the same trap, ...

Quite likely.

> ... plus as far as I can tell, the Linux distro I'm
> trying out only supports up to 8 partitions, meaning some additional
> re-partitioning in order to keep all my Linux partitions within that 
> limit.

Well, NetBSD also supports only 8 partitions on a single device...

> Suggestions appreciated. =)

Another disk drive?  They're rather inexpensive these days.  :)


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