[1065] in netbsd-help mailing list archive
Re: ontrack software.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ravi Nanavati)
Wed Oct 23 17:58:58 1996
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 17:58:42 -0400
To: netbsd-help@MIT.EDU
From: Ravi Nanavati <ravi_n@MIT.EDU>
As I undertand the problem, NetBSD and Drive Manager disagree on
a fundamental level. Drive Manager wants to stand between the OS
and the hard drive, NetBSD wants to talk directly to the hard drive
controller.
To get a computer that requires Drive Manager to deal with NetBSD
do the following:
UNINSTALL the Dynamic Drive Overlay
Make a bootable DOS partition that is entirely contained
below 512 MB (or whatever the 500ish IDE limit is). You will need
this partition to boot off of.
Make sure your NetBSD partition starts below 512 MB and the
entire root subpartition (no more than 20MB in the default install)
is contained below 512 MB.
If you wish to give additional space to DOS about 512 MB, make a
WRITE-READ partition with Drive Manager and load DMDRVR.BIN (or a
device driver name close to that) to access it. This partition
will appear to be a mountable DOS partition to NetBSD if your disklabel
is set up appropriately. I don't think the dospart script will deal with
this kind of partition, though.
If you are not trying to coexist with DOS:
(I am less sure of this information because I haven't set up many
of these systems).
To coexist with Windows NT, you need not do any of this, since NT
wants to talk directly to the hard drive controller as well. I don't
think NT will let you load DMDRVR.BIN, so any write-read partitions you
make will be inaccessible from NT. I believe that with NT, just as with
NetBSD you need to uninstall the Dynamic Drive Overlay in any case for
things to work.
I believe you can coexist with Windows 95 by using DMDRVR.BIN. I think
you can also persuade 95 to talk directly to your hard drive most of the time,
so that you don't even need to do that. I have never tried to set up a computer
that needed Drive Manager to deal with 95 and NetBSD, so I don't know exactly
what needs to be done.
If anything I've said here is unclear, please ask me.
- Ravi
