Re: Multi-boot advice.

Re: Multi-boot advice.

[Iain Sandoe]

On Fri, Jul 7, 2000 Ethan Benson  wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 07, 2000 at 07:52:10AM +0100, Iain Sandoe wrote:
>> On Fri, Jul 7, 2000 Ethan Benson wrote:
>> > On Thu, Jul 06, 2000 at 09:38:38AM +0100, Iain Sandoe wrote:
>> >> Yea Hey first to Apple Drive setup (which at least these days will allow
>> >> most stuff to be set up) - and then to pdisk - to check it out.
>> >
>> > just don't create any linux partitions with apples drive setup, it
>> > won't work.  instead add up the sizes of all the planned linux
>> > parittions and create a placeholder HFS partition with apple drive
>> > setup, then delete it with pdisk and populate the freed space with the
>> > linux and bootstrap partitions.
>>
>> This is interesting.  I've seen (several times) the comment that the Apple
>> Drive Setup tool doesn't work for Linux.
>>
>> However, it certainly did for me (on the Lombard & on a 9600/233)... under
>> what circumstances does it fail?
>
> every time i tested it the following occured:
>
> * drive setup crashed
> * the partition tables were corrupt.
>
> its just good policy to use the native fdisk to create an OS'es
> partitions, on intel we must use DOS fdisk to create DOS/Win*
> partitions and linux fdisk for linux partitions, same with OpenBSD,
> FreeBSD etc.  powerpc is no different.

This is OK for the people on this list.  We are happy with text-only command
line interfaces (hell, I once wrote an entire app in assembler... but I
wouldn't want to do that ever again.)

However, if we want Linux to be extended to a wider audience the kind of
intuitive set up tool (like drive set-up) is going to be essential.

Someone should tell Apple if there's a problem - they seem to be willing to
support (at least) the existence of Linux & other OSs - unlike certain other
companie$

Iain.

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Re: Drive Setup (was Multi-boot)

[Hollis Blanchard]

Iain Sandoe wrote:
>
> On Fri, Jul 7, 2000 Ethan Benson  wrote:
[snip]
> >
> > every time i tested it the following occured:
> >
> > * drive setup crashed
> > * the partition tables were corrupt.
> >
> > its just good policy to use the native fdisk to create an OS'es
> > partitions, on intel we must use DOS fdisk to create DOS/Win*
> > partitions and linux fdisk for linux partitions, same with OpenBSD,
> > FreeBSD etc.  powerpc is no different.

[snip]

>
> Someone should tell Apple if there's a problem - they seem to be willing to
> support (at least) the existence of Linux & other OSs - unlike certain other
> companie$

I have never had Drive Setup crash on me, not even once. To try to
settle this question (not about stability, but about whether it produces
Linux-acceptable partition maps), I've just used Drive Setup's
unmodified "Preferred LinuxPPC" setting to partition a disk. The Mac OS
is currently installing, and I expect no problems when I install Linux
in 5 minutes.

The only complaint I have with Drive Setup is that it insists on erasing
all partitions on the drive any time you want to make partition changes.
Even newbies wondrously appreciating the beautiful Mac OS widgets in
their partitioning utility will not want to reformat their entire hard
disk.

-Hollis

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Re: Drive Setup

[Hollis Blanchard]

Ok, update on Drive Setup:

I partitioned a stock iMac DV with 25GB drive using the "Preferred
LinuxPPC" scheme (which was surprisingly different from the "Preferred
MkLinux" and "Standard MkLinux" schemes). The Drive Setup version was
J1-1.8, which is a Japanese-localized 1.8 (it was on the Mac OS J1-8.6
CD which came with this iMac DV).

Here's what pdisk told me (YDL installed fine, as will any other
distribution that handles Apple partition maps):

All partitions were created with type Apple_UNIX_SVR2.

The names and sizes were as follows (I'm preserving the case):

(Apple_HFS       3.8G)

A/UX Root        4.7G
Swap             50M
Usr file system  4.7G
Opt file system  300M
Home file system 18.9G

The kernel (2.2.17pre9-ben1, but anything recent should be the same) had
no difficulty automatically finding the root partition on hda9. From
earlier experiments I know that the kernel does not just check the
partition name (so it wasn't fooled in this case either). It's worth
noting that root was the first Apple_UNIX_SVR2 partition; I know that
yaboot at least would have been confused by the capital S in "Swap".

It seems to me that while using the default setup may not be a good idea
(19GB /home??), Drive Setup does work fine for creating Linux
partitions. Perhaps renaming them to more standard Linux name would be a
good idea. (I don't have his card with me, but if anyone knows the Apple
employee who wrote Drive Setup please forward this and/or cc him on this
discussion.)

-Hollis

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Re: Multi-boot advice.

[Iain Sandoe]

On Fri, Jul 7, 2000 Ethan Benson wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 06, 2000 at 09:38:38AM +0100, Iain Sandoe wrote:
>> Yea Hey first to Apple Drive setup (which at least these days will allow
>> most stuff to be set up) - and then to pdisk - to check it out.
>
> just don't create any linux partitions with apples drive setup, it
> won't work.  instead add up the sizes of all the planned linux
> parittions and create a placeholder HFS partition with apple drive
> setup, then delete it with pdisk and populate the freed space with the
> linux and bootstrap partitions.

This is interesting.  I've seen (several times) the comment that the Apple
Drive Setup tool doesn't work for Linux.

However, it certainly did for me (on the Lombard & on a 9600/233)... under
what circumstances does it fail?

Still hacking sound stuff on the G3 at present...
haven't got round to following all the advice on set up of the G4 (thanks to
all contributors)...  should be a breeze :-)

Iain.

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Re: Multi-boot advice.

[Nelson Abramson]

Iain Sandoe wrote:

> This is interesting.  I've seen (several times) the comment that the Apple
> Drive Setup tool doesn't work for Linux.
>
> However, it certainly did for me (on the Lombard & on a 9600/233)... under
> what circumstances does it fail?

Apple Drive Setup from MacOS 9 will cause problems if you are using a certain
version of BootX.  That problem was fixed by using a newer version of BootX or
moving to yaboot.

HTH
--Nelson Abramson


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Re: Multi-boot advice.

[Ethan Benson]

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On Fri, Jul 07, 2000 at 07:52:10AM +0100, Iain Sandoe wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Jul 7, 2000 Ethan Benson wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 06, 2000 at 09:38:38AM +0100, Iain Sandoe wrote:
> >> Yea Hey first to Apple Drive setup (which at least these days will allow
> >> most stuff to be set up) - and then to pdisk - to check it out.
> >
> > just don't create any linux partitions with apples drive setup, it
> > won't work.  instead add up the sizes of all the planned linux
> > parittions and create a placeholder HFS partition with apple drive
> > setup, then delete it with pdisk and populate the freed space with the
> > linux and bootstrap partitions.
> 
> This is interesting.  I've seen (several times) the comment that the Apple
> Drive Setup tool doesn't work for Linux.
> 
> However, it certainly did for me (on the Lombard & on a 9600/233)... under
> what circumstances does it fail?

every time i tested it the following occured:

* drive setup crashed
* the partition tables were corrupt.

its just good policy to use the native fdisk to create an OS'es
partitions, on intel we must use DOS fdisk to create DOS/Win*
partitions and linux fdisk for linux partitions, same with OpenBSD,
FreeBSD etc.  powerpc is no different.  

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

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Re: Multi-boot advice.

[Nelson Abramson]

Iain Sandoe wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I've just got a G4/500 - and I want to configure it to boot:
>
> LinuxPPC.
> MacOS (9)
> MacOS (X) / Darwin
> <snip>

Someone posted a triple booting OF script a day or two ago. Check out the
message
at: http://lists.linuxppc.org/listarcs/linuxppc-user/200006/msg01350.html

HTH
--Nelson Abramson


** Sent via the linuxppc-dev mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Re: Multi-boot advice.

[Dan Foster]

Hot Diggety! Iain Sandoe was rumored to have wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I've just got a G4/500 - and I want to configure it to boot:

Me too :) I haven't gotten LinuxPPC 2000 to boot the 2.2.15pre3 kernel yet,
so haven't installed that one yet, but MacOS 9 and MacOS X works good.

> I think I read that I must put the Linux boot partition before the MacOS - X
> one?
> Does it matter which partition is the MacOS-9 one?

According to the OS X docs, I believe it says MacOS 9 must be installed
first, so presumably first partition or so. MacOS X can go anywhere, as
I think is also true for LinuxPPC.

-Dan

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Re: Multi-boot advice.

[Holger Bettag]

Dan Foster <dsf@gblx.net> writes:

>
>
> Hot Diggety! Iain Sandoe was rumored to have wrote:
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I've just got a G4/500 - and I want to configure it to boot:
>
> Me too :) I haven't gotten LinuxPPC 2000 to boot the 2.2.15pre3 kernel yet,
> so haven't installed that one yet, but MacOS 9 and MacOS X works good.
>
> > I think I read that I must put the Linux boot partition before the
> > MacOS - X one?
> > Does it matter which partition is the MacOS-9 one?
>
> According to the OS X docs, I believe it says MacOS 9 must be installed
> first, so presumably first partition or so. MacOS X can go anywhere, as
> I think is also true for LinuxPPC.
>
I recommend installing MacOS X before you install Linux, because the MacOS X
installer can subdivide a single OS X partition into root, swap, and usr
partitions. This changes the numbers of all partitions beyond, potentially
confusing an already installed Linux.

  Holger

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Re: Multi-boot advice.

[Olaf Hering]

On Thu, Jul 06, Iain Sandoe wrote:

>

> LinuxPPC.
> MacOS (9)
> MacOS (X) / Darwin
>
> I think (from the comments that have passed on the list) that there may be
> some constraints on partition ordering - and booters.

http://sdb.suse.de/sdb/en/html/olh_ppc_macosx.html

> Does it matter which partition is the MacOS-9 one?

No.


Gruss Olaf

--
 $ man clone

BUGS
       Main feature not yet implemented...

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Re: Multi-boot advice.

[Matt Brubeck]

On Thu, 6 Jul 2000, Iain Sandoe wrote:

> I've just got a G4/500 - and I want to configure it to boot:
>
> LinuxPPC.
> MacOS (9)
> MacOS (X) / Darwin
>
> Does anyone know if there is one boot method that will do all three?

Yes. New-world machines like yours have a built-in graphical multibooter.
Hold down option during boot, and you get a button for each bootable
volume found by open firmware. For this to work with Linux, you must be
using an OF-bootable partition with yaboot, such as the one set up by ybin
<http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/ybin/>. In the latest version, there's
even a cute penguin icon for the yaboot button.

This method is somewhat slow, and you *must* hold down option to boot into
any OS other than your default. Because I rarely boot out of Linux,
however, I use it on my iMac 350 to tri-boot with MacOS 9 and Darwin.

I believe this should work on the iBook, AGP G4, slot-loading iMacs, and
Firewire PowerBooks. Can anyone verify or correct this?


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Re: Multi-boot advice.

[Matt Brubeck]

On Thu, 6 Jul 2000, Iain Sandoe wrote:

> I think I read that I must put the Linux boot partition before the
> MacOS - X one?

If you are using yaboot with an OF-bootable partition (e.g. you are using
ybin to set up a bootstrap partition), then placing that partition before
MacOS will allow you to boot Linux by default without changing any open
firmware settings.

Other than that, partition order shouldn't matter.

Speaking of yaboot, I have a question. Can yaboot boot MacOS, or can I
make it exit back to OF without rebooting?

I'd like to just have my machine always load yaboot, and then use the
yaboot prompt to choose my OS. But once I'm in yaboot, Linux seems to be
my only option. Is this true? If so, can it be changed?


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Re: Multi-boot advice.

[Ethan Benson]

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On Thu, Jul 06, 2000 at 07:57:13AM -0700, Matt Brubeck wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 6 Jul 2000, Iain Sandoe wrote:
> 
> > I think I read that I must put the Linux boot partition before the
> > MacOS - X one?
> 
> If you are using yaboot with an OF-bootable partition (e.g. you are using
> ybin to set up a bootstrap partition), then placing that partition before
> MacOS will allow you to boot Linux by default without changing any open
> firmware settings.

if you use a multiboot script and you place the Apple_Bootstrap
partition first you will always get the boot choice without altering
OF settings.

> Other than that, partition order shouldn't matter.
> 
> Speaking of yaboot, I have a question. Can yaboot boot MacOS, or can I
> make it exit back to OF without rebooting?

well strictly speaking, no.  yaboot cannot boot anything else, and
once its loaded OpenFirmware is pretty much destroyed.  you can
however use a magicboot script to give you the choice to boot linux or
macos, this scriptloads before yaboot and thus can boot macos.  

> I'd like to just have my machine always load yaboot, and then use the
> yaboot prompt to choose my OS. But once I'm in yaboot, Linux seems to be
> my only option. Is this true? If so, can it be changed?

yes use a magicboot script.  see the ybin docs.

> 
> 

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

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