Re: rough start

[Nick Holland <nick@holland-consulting.net>]

Mark Luquette wrote:
> 
> I have not had problems installing OpenBSD 2.9 from CD onto a virgin systems.
> I am now trying to get it going on a partition in Windows territory and need
> to check some basic assumptions:
> 
> In windows, on a secondary drive, I have an active fat32 partition 9GB of
> 20GB
> I can use the windows software to create an additional 9 GB partition from the
> "unallocated space"

You can't use Windows to properly create an OpenBSD partition.
 
> If I do not choose a file sys like Fat32 or NTFS ,
> When I go to install OpenBSD fdisk recognizes it as DOS > 32 MB
> 1. Was it a mistake to form the partition in windows ?

Yep.
Create an OS's partition using the OS's partitioning tool, or at least
a partitioning tool that recognizes the OS.

Fatal error?  No, but not overly productive steps.

> 2. How to reformat the DOS partition as an OpenBSD partition - man and FAQ
> suggest that the partition table should say OpenBSD in the far right column -
> does it matter ?

YES IT MATTERS.

You could, in theory, make the partition using whatever OS you wish,
then change its type to A6 (the "OpenBSD" type) in OpenBSD's fdisk,
but, uh, why?  

> 3. Open BSD does install on the DOS partition, 

I don't want to think about this.  This is really disturbing. 8-)

> but I have not been able to
> boot it - I did however not flag it and am trying that now.

If this is your secondary drive as you indicate, flagging the
partition active isn't going to help anything.  You need to use
something to get the second drive to boot at all.  Boot floppy/CD
would be recommended starting point.

Read the following:
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq8.html#8.9
  (this will help you with the boot floppy)
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#14.7
  (take careful note of the 8G issues, you appear to be trying to
violate this)
http://www.holland-consulting.net/tech/ocep/disks.html#bigdisk
The installation portions of the FAQ.

I would also recommend if you are unsure of your way around disk
partitioning, play with a spare hard disk FIRST.  Load it up with a
token of whatever you don't wish to blow away on your production
drive, and make sure you can install OpenBSD around the existing
partition(s) before committing to it on the production drive.

And have a good backup.

Nick.
-- 
http://www.holland-consulting.net/