Has anybody recently migrated from *cough* Linux to NetBSD?

[Ottavio Caruso]

Hi,

this is my disk layout as seen from Linux's perspective:

/dev/sda1 2048 1023999 1021952 499M Windows recovery environment
/dev/sda2 1024000 1226751 202752 99M EFI System
/dev/sda3 1226752 1259519 32768 16M Microsoft reserved
/dev/sda4 1259520 103657471 102397952 48.8G Microsoft basic data
/dev/sda5 103657472 206057471 102400000 48.8G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda6 223012864 877277183 654264320 312G Microsoft basic data
/dev/sda7 206057472 223012863 16955392 8.1G Linux swap
/dev/sda8 877277184 976773119 99495936 47.5G Linux filesystem

$ df -h|grep sda
/dev/sda5 48G 9.4G 36G 21% /
/dev/sda2 95M 32M 64M 33% /boot/efi
/dev/sda8 47G 32G 13G 73% /home
/dev/sda6 312G 258G 55G 83% /home/oc/storage

I could shrink one or more of the existing partitions and make room
for a 50GB NetBSD installation.

I could mount the vfat partition (/dev/sda6) and I could move some
data off the /home partition (/dev/sda8) little by little, until I
have replicated some of the configuration.

The immediate problems are:

1) Is it ok to put the / (root) of NetBSD at the end of the disk?

2) Should the bootloader be installed on the newly created BSD
partition? Or better install it onto a usb drive?

3) Will Grub be able to see the NetBSD partition or vice versa the
NetBSD bootloader chainload Grub?

4) If and when I am ready to rock and roll with NetBSD alone, should I
then resize (enlarge) the NetBSD partition or add more partitions
(slices)?

This is where it gets complicated, at least for me, and is holding me
back from installing NetBSD alongside Linux.

And no, I can't install a 2nd hard drive, This is an old Thinkpad.

[RVP]

Post by Ottavio Caruso
1) Is it ok to put the / (root) of NetBSD at the end of the disk?

On spinning disks, xfer speeds near the end of a disk are slower, apart
from that, it should be OK.

Post by Ottavio Caruso
2) Should the bootloader be installed on the newly created BSD
partition? Or better install it onto a usb drive?

If you have UEFI, then you don't need to install the MBR-type bootloader
onto initial sectors on some partition. The UEFI BIOS should be capable
of booting the bootloader file (BOOTX64.EFI) directly, of you tell it
where it is located.

I have this layout:

$ gpart show -l ada0
=> 34 976773101 ada0 GPT (466G)
34 2014 - free - (1.0M)
2048 614400 1 EFI (300M)
616448 1228800 2 Basic data partition (600M)
1845248 262144 3 Microsoft reserved partition (128M)
2107392 8192 4 FreeBSD_EFI (4.0M)
2115584 104857600 7 FreeBSD_13.0 (50G)
106973184 8390656 8 FreeBSD_swap (4.0G)
115363840 16384 9 NetBSD_EFI (8.0M)
115380224 41943040 10 NetBSD_9.2 (20G)
157323264 10485760 11 NetBSD_swap (5.0G)
167809024 20971520 12 Linux filesystem (10G)
188780544 16384 13 OpenBSD_EFI (8.0M)
188796928 62914560 14 OpenBSD_6.9 (30G)
251711488 104857600 15 NetBSD_test (50G)
356569088 19470336 - free - (9.3G)
376039424 8388608 5 Ubuntu_swap (4.0G)
384428032 592343040 6 Ubuntu_19.04 (282G)
976771072 2063 - free - (1.0M)

$

I've created EFI (ie. VFAT) partitions for each of the OSes, (except
Linux which uses the system EFI) and copied the *.EFI files (the EFI
bootloader) that come with each OS into `EFI\boot\' and then told my
BIOS about them (select a an EFI partition and the path within it
to the *.EFI files).

You can also just use the system EFI partition: create X:\NETBSD
and put the bootloader files there and inform BIOS.

-RVP

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[David H. Gutteridge]

Hi,

Someone else has already answered with other information, I'll just add
to one of your other questions.

Post by Ottavio Caruso
3) Will Grub be able to see the NetBSD partition or vice versa the
NetBSD bootloader chainload Grub?

I'm dual-booting Debian 9.13 and NetBSD 9.2 on one machine, using Grub
for both (it's a non-UEFI system). So if you do want to use Grub, it's
pretty straightforward (the manual has a little section that covers
NetBSD). If you try it and run into any trouble, feel free to ping me.

Regards,

Dave


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[Ottavio Caruso]

Post by David H. Gutteridge
Hi,
Someone else has already answered with other information, I'll just add
to one of your other questions.

Post by Ottavio Caruso
3) Will Grub be able to see the NetBSD partition or vice versa the
NetBSD bootloader chainload Grub?

I'm dual-booting Debian 9.13 and NetBSD 9.2 on one machine, using Grub
for both (it's a non-UEFI system). So if you do want to use Grub, it's
pretty straightforward (the manual has a little section that covers
NetBSD). If you try it and run into any trouble, feel free to ping me.
Regards,
Dave

I most likely will at one point. Thanks.