Subject: Re: Strange, man...just plain strange!
From: Timothy A. Seufert (tas@mindspring.com)
Date: Tue Oct 30 2001 - 16:43:52 MST
At 2:26 PM -0800 10/30/01, Chip Witt wrote:
>NEW AND INTERESTING PROBLEM:
>
>I go to create my partitions. Not rocket science. I create a 10 MB
>bootstrap partition (registers as the normal HFS partition type -- pay
>attention, we'll get back to this). I create a 512 MB swap partition.
>I create my 6 GB root partition as a general Linux partition (ext2).
>I create my 12 GB crap partition (ext2). I SAVE THE CONFIG.
>
>I then go to set up my mount points. Everything is where I expect it to
>be except the HFS bootstrap partition is nowhere to be seen (important
>to note that, on the first pass of this exercise, I excused this as just
>a change in the install--giving credit to the install intelligently
>knowing that I wanted the bootstrap partition to be /boot--
Whoa, stop right there. You don't actually want the bootstrap
partition to be /boot. The boostrap partition should never be
mounted anywhere under any OS. Unless you force ybin to do
otherwise, ybin doesn't even mount it when copying the bootstrap
files to the partition (it uses hfsutils instead). The YDL installer
is doing the right thing here.
The versions of yaboot included with YDL 2.0 onwards can load kernels
right off a /boot that is part of your root filesystem. With YDL 2.0
and 2.1 there is basically no need to have a separate /boot partition
unless your root FS is something that yaboot can't deal with. (For
example I'm pretty sure it doesn't know about ReiserFS, but it
definitely handles ext2.) The bootstrap partition now holds just
three files: the Linux bootloader program (yaboot), a configuration
file for same (yaboot.conf), and an Open Firmware boot menu script
(ofboot.b).
>of course,
>I was wrong--wouldn't boot because the HFS partition with the yaboot
>crap wasn't found).
Did the installer ever ask you whether you wanted to install yaboot?
(should happen after package installs if I recall correctly, but it
may not ask you at all if you don't use the expert install option)
It might have failed to set the Open Firmware boot-device variable
correctly. Have you tried holding down the option key while powering
on the machine to get the built in iconic boot menu? (should give
you the option to select the Linux bootstrap partition if it was set
up correctly)
>I back up a step (on my fourth or fifth iteration of
>this ineffective process) and check the partitions post-save and find
>that what was originally labelled an HFS bootstrap partition maintains
>its label, but now reads "none" under the Filesystem column (I even
>tried moving where this partition was--from /dev/hda2 to /dev/hda3, etc.
>with no effect).
Not sure what's happening here.
>Bells and whistles gave rise to a brilliant idea: I'll just boot off my
>trusty MacOS disks and partition the drive from there (or, at the very
>least, create the necessary HFS partition). Do so. Go back the install.
>Just when I thought that I had successfully out smarted the YD 2.1
>installer (feeling very proud), the installation errors creating the
>symbolic links to vmlinux, System Map, etc. from the files with the
>version numbers marked on them.
I assume that at this point you were forcing the installer to mount
the HFS bootstrap partition on /boot. The errors probably happened
because you can't create symlinks on HFS -- HFS doesn't have symbolic
links. (Apple had to use some hack for simulating them on HFS+ under
MacOS X.)
>My trusty YD 2.0 install disks, that had previously allowed me to
>install the distribution before, are now exhibiting the identical
>bootstrap partition issues that I've run into with YD 2.1 (not allowing
>me to create the necessary HFS partition--actually worse, leading me to
>believe the partition is created and then showing me otherwise later in
>the install). Thinking I had done something horrible to my PRAM or my
>hard drive, I zapped the PRAM and reinstalled MacOS 9.2.1 and OSX 10.1.
>These installed without incident (also the hardware checker I ran prior
>to install came back OK). Went back to YD installs and found the same
>problem with creating the bootstrap partition (2.0 and 2.1).
I expect that you were doing some step differently in your previous
YDL 2.0 installs.
>By the way, the first person that calls me a whiner is getting seriously
>flamed.
There is a world of difference between a frustrated call for help and
(effectively) telling everybody in the Linux world off because things
didn't go easy enough. :) The former can be a strategy for getting
help, the latter is an effective strategy for getting flamed.
-- Tim Seufert
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Tue Oct 30 2001 - 16:56:04 MST