"Big" disk image problem with current Debian version

[Derrik Pates]

The current version of Mac-on-Linux in Debian sid works fine with 
smaller disk images - I can run MacOS 9.x fine (I have it in a 768MB 
disk image). It also boots MacOS X from CD just fine, as long as the 
disk image is small. However, it needs at least 2 GB of disk to install, 
so I figured I could install it in a 2 GB disk image. However, I came to 
discover this doesn't work.

First, I tried making it _exactly_ 2 GB (dd if=/dev/zero of=imagefile 
bs=1024k count=2048) - MOL spat out errors about value too large for 
defined datatype, and didn't give any size value. MacOS X saw the disk 
as size 0 in that case. Sigh.

Remade the disk image with 2000 1MB blocks instead of 2048 (no largefile 
support, obviously :/). Started MOL with the OS X CD in the drive, it 
goes and does its little spinny thing during the startup, changes video 
modes, and *blam* black window and lots of:

Unmapped 'RAM-read-access', 55555555
Unmapped 'RAM-read-access', 55555555
Unmapped RAM-write-access, 55555561
Unmapped RAM-write-access, 55555555
Unmapped RAM-write-access, 55555565
Unmapped RAM-write-access, 55555571
Unmapped RAM-write-access, 555555d9
Unmapped RAM-write-access, 555555d5
Unmapped RAM-write-access, 555555dd
Unmapped RAM-write-access, 555555e1

and so on, and so forth. I tried using an image of the CD to boot from 
to do the install, and got the same net result (slightly different 
addresses). I'm surprised it doesn't have largefile support, so that big 
disk images can be handled - but even then, what can we do about the 
unmapped access errors? Any ideas? I can probably hack in largefile 
support, but I don't know the inner secrets of handling the virtual disk 
stuff, so me hacking in largefile support would only be a small part of 
the answer.

--
Derrik Pates
dpates@dsdk12.net