Re: about harddisk installing!

[Marcus Watts <mdw@umich.edu>]

"Qiwen Wei[EXCH:DATA:NCE]" <QiwenW@nortelnce.com> writes:
> Message-ID: <4F87FF023984D211B3E40090271E054901C9C7BE@ZNPTEX01>
> From: "Qiwen Wei[EXCH:DATA:NCE]" <QiwenW@nortelnce.com>
> To: bugs@openbsd.org
> Subject: about harddisk installing!
> Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2002 14:12:55 +0800 
> Precedence: list
> Sender: owner-bugs@openbsd.org
> 
> hi,
>   i am a openbsd newbie,but i like openbsd very much.
>   I want to install openbsd on my Dell laptop from harddisk,so i begin
> preparing.
>   
>   ok ,i download all files and make a bootable floppy successfully,and i
> have a unused apace 
> for openbsd.
>   I have win98 on laptop,there are c,d,e partition ,openbsd files stored on
> c,it's a primary
> partition.
>   booting from floppies 3,because i have 2 PCMCIA cards,it's all ok in
> booting ,then system 
> goes into fdisk,there is disk wd0 i can change as follow:
>  
>  0   0C          Win95 FAT32L
>  1   0F          Extended LBA
>  2   A6          OpenBSD
>  3   00          unused
> 
> part 3 is the begin of the whole disk
> 
>  i type q,system writes some message and goes into next page,here i type a
> and allocte two 
> part,this is / and /swap,then type q, config networks.
>  
>  the next is very important to me ,i select installing from local disk,then
> select wd0 (only
> wd0), next is selecting partition,there are only a ,b and c,these all are
> what i created before,but i want to install it from win95 partitions, where
> can i find it?

Uh-- bugs@ ?  I think this should have gone to misc@

Your windows partition will probably appear as wd0i .  In general,
openbsd makes the foreign OS partitions available as i, j, k, l, etc.
There are 2 places this happens: in the kernel, when a default label
is created when there is no openbsd partition, and in disklabel when
you create the opnbsd /, swap, etc partitions -- the ones you see
as "wd0a", "wd0b", "wd0c", etc.  If you delete the i,j+ partitions
in disklabel, you may only be able to get them back by zeroing out the disk
label & starting over.

You may have to mount the install distribution partitions outside of
the install script itself.  You can get from the install scripts to a
shell prompt by using just '!'.  You can get back to the install script
with ^D (you won't see another prompt, so you're going to just
have to remember where you you were.)  From the shell, you should
be able to do something like this:
	mkdir /windoze
	mount -r /dev/wd0i /windoze
	ls /windoze
That directory /windoze is only in the install ramdisk, so it will be
vaporized when you next reboot.  -r says readonly; a small protection
against the installer or kernel doing evil things to windows.  You should
be able to then tell the installer to use the already mounted filesystem
/windoze.

Another possibly helpful trick is, if you botch the installer and wind
up a prompt or so past where you wanted to be, you can type ^C and
abort the whole thing.  You'll get another "install, upgrade, shell"
prompt, and you can start over.  Looks like the install script traps
interrupts and will unmount any surprises.  You may be able to reuse
existing disk labels and partition information.  You'll have to endure
the mkfs and untar steps all over.  Alternatively, another way is if
you know you want to mount something, select shell first, mount
whatever, then type ^D at the shell prompt to get back to the "install,
upgrade, shell" prompt, and select install.

To get an idea what things are available to be mounted, you can also
try:
	df /dev/wd0?
this will go through and (hopefully) show you the free space on each,
if it could grok the file format.  Er, well, except sadly for you it
doesn't understand msdos (just ffs, e2fs, lfs) so you'll only get an
error that may at least be different than other conditions.  Also,
	disklabel wd0
will tell you what your label currently looks like.

If you have more than one machine on a local network, another
option is to install your openbsd distribution files on another
machine and make them available via either ftp or http.

				-Marcus Watts