Preparation of hard disk for OpenBSD install before booting the install

floppy is slightly different now.

1 files changed, 27 insertions, 29 deletions

diff --git a/distrib/notes/i386/prep b/distrib/notes/i386/prep
index 3de52f6d8c6..c50cd158eda 100644
--- a/distrib/notes/i386/prep
+++ b/distrib/notes/i386/prep
@@ -2,46 +2,44 @@ NOTE: If you wish to install OpenBSD on your whole disk, i.e. you do
 not want DOS or any other operating system to reside on your hard
 disk, you can skip this section and go on to the section that
 describes installation, below.  If you're upgrading your system from a
-previous release of OpenBSD, you shouldn't have proceeded directly to
-the section about upgrading; you need none of the information
-presented here.
+previous release of OpenBSD, you should have proceeded directly to the
+section about upgrading; you need none of the information presented
+here.
 
 First and foremost, before beginning the installation process, MAKE
 SURE YOU HAVE A RELIABLE BACKUP of any data on your hard disk that you
 wish to keep.  Repartitioning your hard disk is an excellent way to
 destroy important data.
 
-Second, if you are using a disk controller which supports disk
-geometry translation, be sure to use the same parameters for OpenBSD as
-for DOS or the other operating systems installed on your disk.  If you
-do not, it will be much harder to make OpenBSD properly coexist with
-them.  Utilities exist which will print out the disk geometry which DOS
-sees; some versions of DOS "fdisk" also do this.  If you have an "EIDE"
-hard disk, DOS and OpenBSD probably won't see the same geometry, and you
-must be careful to find out the DOS geometry and tell OpenBSD about it
-during the installation.
+Second, if you are using a disk controller which supports disk geometry
+translation, be sure to use the same parameters for OpenBSD as for DOS
+or the other operating systems installed on your disk.  If you do not,
+it will be much harder to make OpenBSD properly coexist with them.
+Utilities exist which will print out the disk geometry which DOS sees;
+some versions of DOS "fdisk" also do this.  If you have an "EIDE" hard
+disk, DOS and OpenBSD probably won't see the same geometry, and you must
+be careful to find out the DOS geometry and tell OpenBSD about it during
+the installation.
 
 Third (but related to the second point above), if you are using a hard
 disk with more sectors than DOS or your controller's BIOS supports without
 some kind of software translation utility or other kludge, you MUST
-BE SURE that all partitions which you want to boot from must start below
-cylinder 1024 by the BIOS's idea of the disk, and that all DOS partitions
-MUST EXIST ENTIRELY BELOW cylinder 1024, or you will either not be able to
-boot OpenBSD, not be able to boot DOS, or you may experience data loss or
-filesystem corruption.  Be sure you aren't using geometry translation that
-you don't know about, but that the DOS "fdisk" program does!
-
-Fourth, use the DOS "fdisk" program or another partition editor to
-repartition your hard disk.  Create a partition of at least 40M in
-size (preferably much larger), and note its starting offset and its
-length (preferably in units of disk sectors or cylinders).  You will
-need that information when installing OpenBSD (and if the offset and
-length are not in those units, you will have to convert them).  Once
-you have created the new OpenBSD partition, mark it as having a
-partition type of 0xA6 (166, in decimal).  If you used "fdisk" to
-partition your disk, you will probably have to use a different
-partition editor to mark the partition with the correct type.
+BE SURE that all partitions which you want to boot from must start and end
+below cylinder 1024 by the BIOS's idea of the disk, and that all DOS
+partitions MUST EXIST ENTIRELY BELOW cylinder 1024, or you will either not
+be able to boot OpenBSD, not be able to boot DOS, or you may experience
+data loss or filesystem corruption.  Be sure you aren't using geometry
+translation that you don't know about, but that the DOS "fdisk" program
+does!
 
+Fourth, use the other operating system's "fdisk" program or partition
+editor to create at least one of the partitions to be used for that
+operating system.  If that operating system is already set up to use the
+entire disk, you will have to back it up, remove and recreate a smaller
+partition for it, and then restore the data from that partition.  You do
+not have to create an OpenBSD partition at this time, the OpenBSD install-
+ation will give you an oppotunity to create the partition needed for
+OpenBSD.
 
 Finally, do whatever is necessary to restore order to the partition
 you took space away from.  If it was a DOS partition, you probably