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: Drive Setup (was Multi-boot)

[Iain Sandoe]

On Fri, 07 Jul 2000 Hollis Blanchard wrote:
> 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.

I'm also going to try it when I get round to the G4 multi-boot install ;-)
Still doing dmasound backport...

will report back.

> 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.

Yes, we really need a MacOS "Partition Magic" or equivalent.  I wonder if
anyone on the list knows how to do it ;-)

Iain.

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