On Sun, 27 Apr 2003 03:22:29 -0700, Jochen Kunz wrote

> You have to write the boot floppy image onto the raw disk, i.e. 
> /dev/rsd0c, not into the PReP boot partition. Note that writing the 
> floppy image to /dev/rsd0c overwrites your MBR partition table. Save 
> the output of fdisk into a file, write the floppy image to 
> /dev/rsd0c, start fdisk and restore the old partitioning. This works 
> only if the PReP boot partition is the first partition on the disk.

Sorted, Ta Jochen!

This and various other bits of info from the list eventualy led me down the 
following route (for anyone else having this problem), it's worth noting i 
started from scratch again just to be on the safe side.

1) I defined my partition tables with fdisk -u /dev/sd0 and my label widh 
disklabel -i -I /dev/sd0

2) I saved a copy of both my partition table and disk label to a file

3) I wrote the generic.fs image to /dev/rsd0c with dd if=/sb/generic.fs 
of=/dev/rsd0c (/sb being the mount point of a handy nfs mount)

4) remade the partition table and disklabel via fdisk & disklabel (as in step 
1) using the information id saved to a file earlier.

7) used newfs to build filesystems on the slices id defined.

7) mounted the root from /dev/sd0 onto a temorary mount point (/tm) and 
copied the contents of boot disks root to it (make sense shortly)

8) i made up an fstab file on another machine and placed it both in /etc and 
in /tm/etc

9) unmounteed /tm and ran sysinst

10) I used the upgrade option in sysinst to setup my system rather than the 
install option (to avoid sysinst messing with the hard drives setup) and 
rebooted once it had finished.

11) Rebooted and realised the rc.conf hadnt been configured by sysinst :P

12) After id rebooted from the install disk i moved the default rc.conf file 
to another machine via and nfs mount, edited it and moved it back before 
rebooting and being very very happy :P

Mike Woods
IT Technician