Sidebar… thing.

I’ve looked at countless articles regarding fixed/stretching sidebars, but none that answers my question, and I’ve tried even more ways that I can think of, but none give me exactly what I’m looking for.

I want a left sidebar (fixed-width, %s, ems, units don’t matter here) that stretches out the whole way to the bottom of the page (where, incidentally, there’s going to be a footer).
Ideally, part of the sidebar (namely, the links) would have a position:fixed, but if it’s not possible, then without it.

Basically: sscccccc.

What I get into problems doing is getting the content, when under, say, 400px, to go below the sidebar. I’ve tried everything: images, background images, paddings, negative margins, and nothing seems to make it work just right.

Something tells me this is possible with CSS, so please tell me if I should give up…
[img]http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/2929/models.png[/img]
(Black is just to distinguish from the two situations)

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