Subject: yaboot/dual boot: Grievous assumptions/omissions in YDL Install Guide
From: Scott L. Donaldson (donaldson@sedsystems.ca)
Date: Mon Aug 14 2000 - 14:56:09 MDT
Hi,
I've been search through the mailing lists of late to determine how
to configure my BW G3 to run YDL CS 1.2 . I am familiar with HP-UX, Red
Hat on intel, etc...so I am not a complete novice. I did not want to
touch my MacOS 8.6 disk in any way so I added a slave ATA IDE drive
(bought a new cable for my B&W G3). I did not install any MacOS
partitions on the slave drive. I used the YDL CS 1.2 ISO images and
burnt CDs, booted from the main installer CD and f/pdisked the disk and
installed from there. It took a few "repartitionings" to get those
correct ( or at least useful!). But at least the process is blindingly
fast compared to say an all day HP-UX install!
I followed the instructions in Chapter 6, pages 6.9 6.10 in the
Installation Guide with little sucess. My experiences were similar to
others: failure and confusion. I did however get a chance to learn a bit
about Open Firmware :-) . I did more research and trial and error
testing to finally arrive at a dual boot config with MacOS the default!
And my MacOS drive untouched (except for the four files in the root of
the boot partition: yaboot.conf, yaboot.tbxi,bootinfo.txt, and
yaboot_0.7 ).
I'd like to see the Installation Guide updated to fix the following
issues:
- under the section titled "Configuring a Dual-boot System" we are
instructed to "copy the following text into a new text file in the root
directory of your Linux boot partition:".... What NAME should it be? We
are never explicitly told this but in the setenv command that appear on
page 6.10:
setenv boot-device hd:8,\bootinfo.txt
we have to setup Open Firmware to use a file what is never defined
elsewhere. I'd suggest EXPLICITLY naming the file in the Guide. Oh, and
one other note on the dual-boot script: WARNING: when I used the Acrobat
3.01 text selection tool and pasted the text into a file I had extra
white space all over the place. In several instances the text was double
spaced: eg. "t h e n" instead of "then". This will play havoc with your
script! Check it!
- the dual-boot script names a file that, for first time installers,
is not likely to exist anywhere: yaboot_0.5 . I searched using Acrobat's
search tool and found no other references to that file in the Guide. I
finally determined that if I downloaded the yaboot_07 package and
changed the name in the script to my newly downloaded yaboot_07 software
it worked! (Note: that in my setup I have the script run from my Master
IDE drive which hosts my MacOS install. Not the YDL install on the slave
IDE.)
- the issue of the backslash: how many and where comes into play. I
found, by testing using the boot command in Open Firmware, my script
only worked if I used "\\" to reference the txbi file for MacOS booting
and "\" backslash when referencing the YDL boot. My script is as
follows:
<CHRP-BOOT>
<COMPATIBLE>
iMac,1 PowerMac1,1 PowerBook1,1 PowerMac2,1 PowerMac3,1 PowerBook2,1
</COMPATIBLE>
<DESCRIPTION >
Yellow Dog Linux Bootloader
</DESCRIPTION>
<BOOT-SCRIPT>
" get-key-map" " keyboard" open-dev $call-method
dup 20 dump
5 + c@ 08 = if
" Booting Yellow Dog Linux ..." cr " boot hd:5,\yaboot_0.7" eval
else
" Booting MacOS ..." cr " boot hd:5,\\:tbxi" eval
then
</BOOT-SCRIPT>
</CHRP-BOOT>
-- Scott Donaldson IS Manager SED a division of Calian
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Mon Aug 14 2000 - 14:56:48 MDT