88 lines
4.5 KiB
Plaintext
88 lines
4.5 KiB
Plaintext
$NetBSD: prep,v 1.4 1998/01/09 18:46:10 perry Exp $
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Note you will be modifying your HD's if you mess something up here you
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could lose everything on all the drives that you mess with. It is
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therefore advised that you:
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Write down your current configurations. Do this
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by writing down all partition info (especially their sizes).
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Back up the partitions you are keeping.
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If NetBSD has a disk of it's own, you can delay the partitioning until
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the installer requests you to do it. This means that you can safely skip
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the rest of this section.
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If NetBSD has to share the disk with another operating system, you must
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take care of partitioning your harddisk before installing NetBSD; creating
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space for at least root, swap and /usr partitions and possibly at
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least one more for /local if you have the space.
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Warning: The AHDI partioning function erases all partions on your harddisk
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even if they are not changed!
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I know this is rather stupid, but don't say I didn't warn you.
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If you want to use an AHDI partitioning sceme and you want to be able to boot
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directly into NetBSD, there are some constraints on the partition layout.
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As you might know; every hard disk has a "root sector" that contains
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information about the size of the hard disk and the partitions on the hard
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disk. The root sector can only contain the neccessary data for four
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partitions. Nobody thought that this limitation would cause any problems.
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After all, 640 KByte should be enough. As hard disk grew, it was neccessary
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to define more than four partitions. In order to be more or less compatible
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with the old format, a new type of partition entry was defined: XGM partions.
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An XGM partition is a "look over there" sign: Another root sector can be
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found at the start of the XGM partition. This root sector contains the
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remaining real partitions. And this is the big mystery: Partitions defined
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in the root sector of the hard disk are called "primary partitions",
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partitions defined in the root sector of an XGM partition are called
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"extended partitions".
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The bootblock will only work if the first NBD partition is a primary
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partition. This is not a limitation of NetBSD but a limitation of TOS/AHDI:
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You can only boot from primary partitions.
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If you are creating your partitions with HDX, you'll have to be very careful
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to fulfill this rule. HDX has some very strange ideas when it comes to
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extended partitions. Fortunately, you can edit this stuff: The
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"Edit partition scheme of the unit" dialog box has a button label "expert".
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This button is inactive unless you have defined more than four partitions.
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Click on it *after* you have defined the sizes of the partitions.
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A new dialog box appears on the screen. The left side contains two blocks of
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partitions: The upper block always contains the first four partitions, the
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lower block contains the last three partitions. If you have defined less than
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7 partitions, some fields of the lower block will contain the string "unused".
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Some of the partitions will be displayed in reverse video: These are the
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extended partitions.
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The right side contains six possible ranges for the extended partitions. It
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is not possible to define your own range, you will have to use one of the
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schemes offered by HDX. To quote from Ghostbusters: Choose and die.
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The default scheme used by HDX is the first scheme: Extended partitions start
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with the second partition and end with the second to last partition. If you
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have defined 7 partitions, partitions #2 to #5 will be extended partitions,
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while partitions #1, #6 and #7 will be primary partitions.
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You can move the extended partition range by clicking on one of the buttons
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on the right side of the dalog box. Try to find one where your first NetBSD
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partition is a primary partition. Golden rules:
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* If the disk contains no GEMDOS partitions, don't use AHDI. Let NetBSD
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handle it alone.
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* If the disk contains one GEMDOS partition, make it partition #1 and
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start the extended partition range at partition #3. This allows you
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to boot from both the GEMDOS and the NetBSD partitions.
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* If the disk contains two GEMDOS partitions, use partitions #1 and #2
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for GEMDOS, partition #3 for NetBSD-root. Start the extended partition
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range with partition #4.
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* If your disks contains three or more GEMDOS partitions, you are in
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trouble. Try using partitions #1 and #2 as the first two GEMDOS
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partitions. Use partition #3 as the first NetBSD partition. Start the
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extended partition range with partition #4. Put the other NetBSD
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extended partition range.
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Good luck, you'll need it...
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