Mount NetBSD partition/slice

[Julian Elischer]

On 9/6/15 4:13 PM, Don whY wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've pulled the media from my NetBSD systems (6.x?) before moving to
> FreeBSD (9.2).  The goal was to set up FreeBSD-based appliances and
> maintain them from FreeBSD *systems*.
>
> However, I've been having a tough time getting FreeBSD to play nice
> with the NetBSD media.  A bit of research indicates that there is
> no support for these incompatible volume formats.
>
> So, I can either rebuild one of more NetBSD systems and pull all
> the data across a network connection.  This could be tedious as
> there are 10-12 slices of significant size on each volume.  (I had
> hoped to just install the drives in the FreeBSD boxen and cp(1) the
> contents of the volume at bus speeds.)
>
> Or, just rebuild the NetBSD systems and make NetBSD-based appliances
> (i.e., abandon FreeBSD).
>
> [I'm not an OS zealot; I'm just looking for something that *works*
> with the least amount of wasted effort/time]
>
> Have I missed some "trick" to coax NetBSD into *reading* these
> volumes?
>
> Thanks!
> --don
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I had the same problem when moving from Mach2.5 to 386BSD in 1992..
answer..
after making a physical copy (always make a physical copy),
I noted down the start and end locations for the partitions I wanted, 
and created new 386BSD disklabels on the drive, overwriting the Mach 
VTOCs .
I set the partitions in the new disklabel to match the locations of 
the old ones.
then I just mounted them as the partitioning scheme doesn't touch the 
contents of the partitions, just defines them.
NetBSD have more 'slices' than we had, so you may have to copy out the 
first 8 and then do it again and do the second 8.

use fdisk and disklabel.

IF there is some small amount of space at the end of the device, and 
you can do without the  first partition, (copy it off first) you maybe 
able to use a gpt partition table and get them all (except I remmeber 
that a gpt partitoning block set, uses more space than may be 
available at the front of a NetBSD drive before the frst important 
information. It also uses some space at the end, but you'll have to 
google it to find out how much in each case.