OpenBSD disk geometry help
 

I'm having a few problems installing OpenBSD 2.9, the part that is catching me out is when it asks for the disk geometry.
Another problem is I am trying to triple boot windows/Linux/OpenBSD.
I have windows at the start of the HD followed by an OpenBSD partition I created in Diskdrake or what ever the partition manager is on MDK8.2 & then Linux takes up the rest of the HD.
When I tried the openbsd install I went with all the defaults & I reckon it failed because of incorrect hard drive geometry.
Is there a command in Linux I can use to find out the partition geometry for the OpenBSD partition ???
And I do have the correct partition type for the OpenBSD partition.
Any help, links or anything else would be appreciated.
Cheer's

i got a successful installation of Win2k, OpenBSD 3.0, and Red Hat on the same box. I can give you the general process, what worked for me.

First partition the harddrive how you like. General order that i count as best for installation is as follows:

Windows
OpenBSD
Linux

This way, Windows is on first and content thinking it's the only OS installed. Linux is last, because it's easiest to set up the boot manager under for me. I prefer to use GRUB for the boot loader, it's easy to configure and capable of easily chainloading Other OS's boot loaders in (like NT/2000's NTLDR).

Using fdisk from a Linux bootable CD, partition out a 50 MB partition, a partition for your Windows OS, a partition for your OpenBSD installation, and 2 partitions for Linux (for / and swap).

Install windows, reboot into your openBSD install. Install it into it's partition and use disklabel to set up your / and swap "slices" within that partition. Make sure to change the FS type to the correct parition type, 'A6'. Reboot and start your Linux install. I went RedHat, which has it very easy to load and configure GRUB for your bootloader (the key is the chainloader options, see thier faq/instructions for notes). It's an easy setup, for the most part.

As for your drive geometry problem, it's usually rare that obsd will not detect the drive geometry correctly. Can you post more details on that? The key is knowing that in disklabel, the c partition represents your entire disk and there is an offset of 63 (bytes?) which is where your first partition should start and to make a partition entry, you can specify # of MB with a lower case m, for instance 1024m = 1 GB.

HTH

Thanks for the reply.
I more or less have my HD set up exactly as you
say & I did actually get past tte part of the install where
it asks for partitions, I just went with the default's & the install
failed at the end, I even set up my partitions booting off the MDK cd's
& specified the BSD as A6

:( I am a f**kin idiot, now I think about it the problem isnt with the
HD setup at all, I think it's the network setting's.
I'll try again & let you know how I get on.
Cheer's


Wait it is the HD setup I'm messing up:mad:
I suppose I should read the install instructions in a little bit more detail before I post again.
Thanks again sancho, I'll get it if it's the last thing I do;)

well, good luck with it then. if you want, post the errors you're getting or whatever, and why that indicates an issue with the drive.

if you run into anything else, let everyone know.

Cheer's sancho5, after a few hour's of persevering I managed to install it:D

awesome, what'd it turn out to be?

It didnt turn out to be anything, I just had to get familiar with installing it.
Cheer's;)