Subject: Re: Strange, man...just plain strange!
From: Chip Witt (chip.witt@westwave.com)
Date: Wed Oct 31 2001 - 10:25:14 MST
Dan,
I accidentally figured this out last night myself. Everything you said is true
and correct. The problem was "defaultos=no". Corrected it to read
"defaultos=linux". ybin'd the dealio and, BANG! Up and running a well earned YD
2.1 installation. Glad to hear you are aware of it and have worked it out for
the future ramdisk.
Thanks to all who contributed to my treasure hunt. I can now proudly wear my
Yellow Dog T-shirt (and dump my Mandrake iso)!
CW
Dan Burcaw wrote:
> On Tuesday 30 October 2001 07:56, you wrote:
> > Well, after much work I'm back where I began. Pointing Open Firmware to the
> > partition that should have the bootstrap info in it fails.
> >
> > When I tried formating an HFS partition via the MacOS boot disks, YD 2.1
> > installer does not recognize it as a valid partition in which to place the
> > yaboot stuff. It forces me to create the partition for the bootloader from
> > within the partitioning section of the installer. When I do this, the
> > partition is not created correctly (creating a filesystem labelled as
> > either "none" or "swap" -- even if I delete the old partitions, save,
> > create new partitions, and save), and although the bootloader section of
> > the YD installer claims to find the correct partition and allegedly
> > installs the yaboot stuff, the partition does not have the cheese to boot
> > into the OS.
>
> Couple of things.
>
> 1) The bootloader partition MUST me created from the YDL installer.
> There is no MacOS tool out there that can explicitly create a partition
> of type "Apple_Boot" or "Apple_Bootstrap"
> 2) the "none" or "swap" thing is not really a problem. Yes it is mislabled,
> but this is a symptom of using GNU Parted as the partition backend.
> Parted labels the type of a partition based upon how it is FORMATTED.
> Thus, if you don't have a HFS formatted partition already in the place
> the bootloader partition is being made, you will see it mislabled.
>
> Please don't try to get the label to be correct, it's not worth it.
> The installer will function properly regardless of the mislabel.
>
> 3) Your problem is most likely due to an error condition in the new
> 2.1 bootloader code. Please read on...
>
> In the bootloader configuration,
> what did you answer to the following questions?
>
> - Do you have Mac OS 9 installed on your computer?
> - Do you have Mac OS X installed on your computer?
> - What OS do you want to be the default?
>
> There are certain conditions in the new dual/triple boot
> code in which things could fail. (e.g. yaboot.conf is
> written with wrong syntax, thus the bootloader partition
> is not setup).
>
> The quick fix is to boot off your Install CD
> using:
>
> cd-linux root=/dev/<your root partition>
> edit /etc/yaboot.conf
>
> and change:
>
> defaultos=<whatever is here>
> (probably 'yes' or 'no')
> to
> defaultos=linux
> (or 'macos9' or 'macosx' depending on your preference)
>
> Those cases are:
>
> - When Linux is the only OS.
> - When Linux and Mac OS X but not Mac OS 9 are installed
>
> I have an updated ramdisk if you'd like to test it for me.
> Side note: The new update also properly handles a ext2 /boot partition.
> (Not HFS bootstrap, but an actual small /boot partition
> which should just hold the kernel, etc.)
>
> -Dan
--Chip Witt Sr. Network Administrator Westwave Communications
463 Aviation Blvd. Santa Rosa, CA 95403 (V) 707-284-7237 (F) 707-591-9413 (E) chip.witt@westwave.com
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