[9fans] installer partition magic

[9fans] installer partition magic

[Donn Cave]

I managed to screw up the disk partitions on my laptop a second
time in a row this morning with the 9disk.9fd installer, and I
expect it would do it every time.

After "partdisk" I had partition block offsets,
  63   2345490  4707045  7068600

and I used my NetBSD install disk to move them to
  63   2345490  4717504  7076224

so I can boot the original partitions.

I can't remember by now how I set those partitions up,
whether it was NetBSD or (more likely) the Partition Magic
installer from BeOS 4.0 distribution.  I notice that the
Plan 9 fdisk presents partition sizes in cylinders,
where the Partition Magic uses megabytes.  I don't know
if that's it - 9fdisk is forcing partitions to cylinder
alignment - or what.

The Plan 9 installation went on the first partition, which
seems to have retained its dimensions.  I seem to have some
network problem, because the download timed out (no error
message though.)  I saved the install state and, if I try
again, it won't rewrite the partition map this time, right?

While I'm complaining about partdisk, I should mention that
the procedure assures me that it's going to locate a partition
on its own and just tell me, and then it comes back and says
it can't find a suitable partition.  The ideal thing from my
point of view, would be for it to just ask me.

	Donn Cave, donn@drizzle.com