Re: MacOS X and yaboot wars.

Re: MacOS X and yaboot wars.

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

>
>nah, unless macosx actually flashed a new linux hostile bootrom in
>place just resetting the nvram will certainly blow away whatever they
>did.  (its possible though unlikely that they search for linux
>bootstrap partitions and destroy them, i suppose)
>
>> BTW, MacOS X doesn't have gcc available until November, so it isn't really
>> worth bothering with (unless you like lots of eye candy).
>
>eye candy eye smandy, i really quite like my 1024x768 framebuffer
>console ;-) (even if it is a bit slow)

Their installer does something weird, indeed. It tends to randomly make
another partition of the target disk "vanish". The partition (typically,
the HFS "exchange" partition people keep around) does not appear any more
in the MacOS 9 Finder nor in the file selection dialogs. It still mounts
in Linux and MacOS X.

Apparently, the problem seem to be related to the installer setting the
"invisible" bit of the toplevel (root) directory entry of the HFS volume.
The partition is actually mounted, but invisible. I "fixed" mine using
Norton Disk Editor (Norton Utilities), but there might be other ways.

Ben.

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Re: MacOS X and yaboot wars.

[Ethan Benson]

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On Fri, Sep 22, 2000 at 06:04:02PM +0200, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> 
> Their installer does something weird, indeed. It tends to randomly make
> another partition of the target disk "vanish". The partition (typically,
> the HFS "exchange" partition people keep around) does not appear any more
> in the MacOS 9 Finder nor in the file selection dialogs. It still mounts
> in Linux and MacOS X.

another thing i thought of, does OSX still use a bootstrap partition
of its own? (it must if you choose UFS instead of HFS+) perhaps its
reordering the partition table to make its partition first instead of
ours?  this can be changed back in mac-fisk/pdisk with the `r'
command.  then again it could just be doing the same inspect and
debless crap macos is notorious for, a rerun of ybin will fix that.
(if the BSD layer remains sufficiently intact in OSX final i may see
about getting ybin working from the OSX side, but that depends on
whether i can get access to OSX or not)

> Apparently, the problem seem to be related to the installer setting the
> "invisible" bit of the toplevel (root) directory entry of the HFS volume.
> The partition is actually mounted, but invisible. I "fixed" mine using
> Norton Disk Editor (Norton Utilities), but there might be other ways.

hmount /dev/foo
hattrib -i :
humount /dev/foo

will fix that from the linux side.  though linux ignores that bit.

that is odd and disconcerting that its tampering with other partitions
like that, i hope its a bug that will be removed in the next beta
rather then intentional.  

as for the invisible bit on the root, macos still mounts the disk, but
since the root directory is invisable it does not show it anywhere.  i
used to do this to people's floppies as a joke ;-)

-- 
Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/

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Re: MacOS X and yaboot wars.

[Ethan Benson]

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On Mon, Sep 25, 2000 at 11:49:51PM +0000, Guillaume Laures wrote:
> 
> Yes it does.
> Another weird thing is that it mounts the bootstrap partition.
> But it doesn't unbless anything. And triple-boot works perfectly.
> I just had to mess around with partition # (and btw I seem to have 3 free
> partition disappear).

you should be able to reorder this so your bootstrap partition is first.

[snip]

> 
> It's a 27G disk...
> May be I'll change "Apple_Bootstrap" to "Apple_Boot" ?

i wouldn't then MOSX will think that its it owns this partition and
who know what it will do to it then.  if its Apple_Bootstrap its less
likely apple will destroy it randomly since OSX does not know what it
is.

i very much doubt they reorder the partition table at every boot so
using the `r' command in mac-fdisk should allow you to reorder the
table so Apple_Bootstrap is first.

-- 
Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/

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Re: MacOS X and yaboot wars.

[Michael Schmitz]

> > It's a 27G disk...
> > May be I'll change "Apple_Bootstrap" to "Apple_Boot" ?
>
> i wouldn't then MOSX will think that its it owns this partition and
> who know what it will do to it then.  if its Apple_Bootstrap its less
> likely apple will destroy it randomly since OSX does not know what it
> is.

Does ybin rely on the Apple_Bootstrap type? If not, just call it any way
you like to make MacOS messing with it even more unlikely.

> i very much doubt they reorder the partition table at every boot so
> using the `r' command in mac-fdisk should allow you to reorder the
> table so Apple_Bootstrap is first.

Caution: I've found the reorder option to work in very non-obvious ways
(partitions could only be moved one way IIRC). I'll have to investigate
that in more detail.

	Michael


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Re: MacOS X and yaboot wars.

[Ethan Benson]

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On Tue, Sep 26, 2000 at 10:10:49AM +0200, Michael Schmitz wrote:
> 
> Does ybin rely on the Apple_Bootstrap type? If not, just call it any way
> you like to make MacOS messing with it even more unlikely. 

ybin could not care less, ybin will install onto a regular file
happily ;-)  

what DOES care is OpenFirmware, which insists on it being Apple_Boot*
Apple_Boot is used by apple so macosx will do whatever it wants
whenever it wants, Apple_HFS is out since macos old will ruin it as we
have all seen.  Apple used to use Apple_Booter so i would avoid that too.  

i think the best solution is just reorder the partitions again after
installing OSX.  using Apple_Boot would probably just mean your
partition would be erased instead of moved which is far worse IMO.

> Caution: I've found the reorder option to work in very non-obvious ways
> (partitions could only be moved one way IIRC). I'll have to investigate
> that in more detail. 

it can be done, but yes i have not totally figured out the right
syntax.

ill see if i can get Clausen to add reorder support to parted if its
not already there.

-- 
Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/

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Re: MacOS X and yaboot wars.

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

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>
>ybin could not care less, ybin will install onto a regular file
>happily ;-)
>
>what DOES care is OpenFirmware, which insists on it being Apple_Boot*
>Apple_Boot is used by apple so macosx will do whatever it wants
>whenever it wants, Apple_HFS is out since macos old will ruin it as we
>have all seen.  Apple used to use Apple_Booter so i would avoid that too.
>
>i think the best solution is just reorder the partitions again after
>installing OSX.  using Apple_Boot would probably just mean your
>partition would be erased instead of moved which is far worse IMO.

Well, I know Ethan doesn't like this solution, but I personally like it
and feel it's ok for people who know what they are doing ;)

First, I have no bootstrap partition. I have a (around 1Gb) HFS standard
partition that I use for exchanging things between Linux and MacOS. On
this partition, I have yaboot, yaboot.conf, the kernels (but those could
be on ext2) and the OF boot script.

All I do is to configure OF manually OF to load the script (setenv boot-
device hd:10,script) and that's all.

I also have a fake System and Finder (included). Those are seen by MacOS
9.0.4 on my box as "legal" system & finder and MacOS will not unbless a
fake system folder with them in it. (In fact, it will even re-bless the
folder).
I _know_ that this doesn't work for all combinations of machines. It does
work for me (Pismo). Basically, my setup looks like:

 /Scratch (HFS exchange partition)
   |
   |-/Bootstrap (fake system folder)
       |-Finder (fake Finder)
       |-System (fake System, could be miBoot for oldworld)
       |-MagicBoot (OF boot script with the type/creator of
       |            a MacOS ROM file (tbxi/MACS))
       |-yaboot
       |-yaboot.conf
       |-kernels & ramdisk

Ben.

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Re: MacOS X and yaboot wars.

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

>
>Interestingly enough, I noticed this tidbit in their BootX script:
>
>-------------------------------------------
>if 0 0 then
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>-------------------------------------------
>
>Implying that they may be doing something with ext2 support.

You "tidbit" was empty ;)

They have indeed ext2 support in their "BootX". They have ELF support.
They have almost everything needed to boot the Linux kernel as well. I
need to implement the necessary support in the kernel itself to get it
working.
>
>The only major problem I've got is that whenever I boot plain old
>MacOS by itself, it ruthlessly deblesses the MacOS X partition,
>rendering it unable to boot.  I have to use System Disk if I want to
>boot into MacOS X again, and since it blows away my boot-device
>setting I have to force the machine into OF to set it again if I want
>to use the ofboot boot menu.  Annoying, but not a new problem.


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Re: MacOS X and yaboot wars.

[Timothy A. Seufert]

At 12:16 PM +0200 9/23/00, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
>>
>>Interestingly enough, I noticed this tidbit in their BootX script:
>>
>>-------------------------------------------
>>if 0 0 then
>>
>>
>>-------------------------------------------
>>
>>Implying that they may be doing something with ext2 support.
>
>You "tidbit" was empty ;)

It sure didn't look that way when I wrote it in Eudora!  And in fact
it made it through to Ethan Benson, who was CC'ed.  Maybe the mailing
list software mangled it.

Bizarre.

>They have indeed ext2 support in their "BootX". They have ELF support.
>They have almost everything needed to boot the Linux kernel as well. I
>need to implement the necessary support in the kernel itself to get it
>working.

Cool!  Do you know if their "BootX" is under their open source license?

   Tim Seufert

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Re: MacOS X and yaboot wars.

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt]

>>They have indeed ext2 support in their "BootX". They have ELF support.
>>They have almost everything needed to boot the Linux kernel as well. I
>>need to implement the necessary support in the kernel itself to get it
>>working.
>
>Cool!  Do you know if their "BootX" is under their open source license?

Not yet, but that's supposed to happen one day.

Ben.

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