[TUHS] Re: non-broken 4.3BSD set?

[Robertdkeys at aol.com]

That is what I do.  After several failures, I
find that using first NetBSD-1.4.1 boot to both
label and install boot blocks, followed by second,
NetBSD-1.2 boot and edlabel to trim the labels
back to something akin to a Tahoe style label,
seems to be the only way that works reliably.
The label 1.4.1 writes is different from the
Tahoe label, in that it computes incorrect c
partition sizes.  It does write something that
I think is bootblock related that seems to must
be there for Quasijarus to boot on my hardware.
I am not sure exactly what it is, but using just
the 1.2 edlabel does not seem to work reliably.
The 1.2 edlabel seems to write a correct c size
partition, though, after the 1.4.1 bits are put
on.  I ought to dd off the binary bits and see
what is actually being written.  But, the above
seems to work, for me, and got my crashed disks
back up a few minutes ago, after hours of prom
formatting....(:+{{.....  Anyway, that is how I
get the machine up.  If there is a better or
easier way, someone holler.  I am wondering if
a dd image of a working few start blocks on a
disk could be copied over to a raw formatted
disk from the tape copy, before the miniroot
went on, as part of the boot/install process?
An undersized disk label with reasonably sized
a and b partitions and a small but installable
h partition (big enough for the usr tarball to
fit on) should allow a bootable system to be
installed.  From that it could be set up on a
second disk with correctly sized labels.  Or,
when the tape was written, a selection of disk
boot/label images could be set up and a correct
one written to the boot tape for the target disk
install.  What other ways could this be done?

Michael, what are your thoughts on setting up
the disks, reasonably?

Thanks

Bob