Subject: Re: Newbie installation questions...
From: Hiroto Sawane (hirotos@swanstudio.com)
Date: Mon May 29 2000 - 16:54:58 MDT
on 5/29/00 12:10, Eric Fronberg at enf@cisco.com wrote:
> The HD is partitioned into two pieces. The first is HFS+ at ~17.5 Gb
> The second partition is HFS at ~8 Gb.
I don't think Linux would recognize/use HFS partition as its boot drive,
although I'm also a newbie to Linux and therefore I'm not sure 100%.
I don't know this would help, but here is my example;
I have two hard drives installed. The first one takes care of Mac OS. The
second one is set up as a slave: The first partition (10GB) is HFS+ with
Mac OS on it, and then 5GB for Linux (root + swap total). When I
partitioned the second disk, I ran Disk Setup in Mac OS, assigned 10GB as
HFS and left the rest UNTOUCHED. Then I boot from YDL CD, got into pdisk
(fdisk) and it saw untouched 5GB as "Apple_Free." I went ahead and
partitioned this as root and swap and everything got installed just fine.
As far as I know, (correct me if wrong!) you can use pdisk to delete and
repartition "Apple_....." partition and install Linux there, but Mac OS Disk
Setup can't reinitialize an existing partition. It would say something like
"Can't initialize: format not supported."
> .....I'm concerned about yaboot or xboot
> requirements/assumptions.
yaboot is mandatory for "New World ROM" system (=G4, iMac DV, etc.). And I
think a small HFS partition is mandatory in order for yaboot to work. (Mac
OS doesn't have to be there with yaboot, though)
> - Any insights on the 2nd partition booting? I'm guessing that this
> might be a firmware issue. (Not able to deal with such a large drive??)
Again, I'm a newbie and therefore I'm not sure 100% about this, but as far
as I know firmware/drive size isn't an issue.
> - Will the 2nd partition booting issue affect YDL booting? (yaboot or xboot?)
I boot YDL from the "2nd partition" on the slave drive (hdb10 = partition
#10 on the second drive to be exact) and it works just fine.
> I've spent Many, Many hours reinstalling the OS onto the first
> parition and don't look forward to having to do that again
> (Reformatting to HFS, and reinstalling the data) in order to have YDL
> see the the MacOS partition.
I don't think Linux can see HFS partition but I'm not sure. Good question
anyway since I would like to know if there is a way to actually make my Mac
OS see Linux partition and make Linux see Mac OS partition.
> What I'm considering now (as an approach) is booting MacOS 9 from the
> CDROM, and copying all the info from the first partition to the
> second, then initializing the first partition to HFS and then copying
> all the data back.
>
> - Is there any problem with the above approach?
I think you just have to boot from YDL install CD, run pdisk (fdisk), find
"Apple_...." partition that has empty HFS (= Your second HFS partition
that's empty for Linux) and repartition that with pdisk.
Just my two cents.... ;-)
I hope things will go okay with yours.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Mon May 29 2000 - 16:52:30 MDT