reboot after installation fails

[Andreas Pack]

> We have an Xserve that is only running Linux, so we're in the same
> boat. And it's running just great.

> As far as I can see, the reason for the failure was your removal of the
> Mac special partitions.  A Mac will not boot at all without them.  Boot
> Mac OS X from the CD, install it, and then boot from the YDL CD.  You
> can take out the Mac OS X partition, but you must leave the Mac
> partitions 1-8 as indicated below (partition map from our machine):

> # pdisk -l /dev/hde

> Partition map (with 512 byte blocks) on '/dev/hde'
>  #:                type name               length   base      ( size )
>  1: Apple_partition_map Apple                  63 @ 1        
>  2:      Apple_Driver43*Macintosh              56 @ 64       
>  3:      Apple_Driver43*Macintosh              56 @ 120      
>  4:    Apple_Driver_ATA*Macintosh              56 @ 176      
>  5:    Apple_Driver_ATA*Macintosh              56 @ 232      
>  6:      Apple_FWDriver Macintosh             512 @ 288      
>  7:  Apple_Driver_IOKit Macintosh             512 @ 800      
>  8:       Apple_Patches Patch Partition       512 @ 1312     
>  9:     Apple_Bootstrap untitled            20481 @ 1824      ( 10.0M)
> 10:     Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap               524289 @ 22305     (256.0M)
> 11:     Apple_UNIX_SVR2 untitled           131073 @ 546594    ( 64.0M)
> 12:     Apple_UNIX_SVR2 untitled         16777217 @ 677667    (  8.0G)
> 13:     Apple_UNIX_SVR2 untitled        102648315 @ 17454884  ( 48.9G)
> 14:          Apple_Free Extra                   1 @ 120103199


Thank you very much for your answer. I am glad to hear about someone
who has an Xserve with Linux installed :o)

First I tried Debian, but the Installation from CD fails too, because
the kernel won't recognize the IDE-Disks (Lost Interrupt). So I
decided to try YDL.

> YDL doesn't need Mac OS, but the machine itself won't boot unless
> you have these partitions left.  Note that there is no Mac OS on any
> of these partitions.

Yes, that was already my supposition and so I installed Mac OS X
server again yesterday. This time I left ALL partitions (also Mac OS
X) and created the three necessary partitions. Then I told the
installation setup that one Mac OS X installation exist on my server
(I choose "boot linux as default"). The question if YDL should install
ybin on the bootstrap partition I answered with yes. After rebooting
Mac OS X Server was started immediately and not Linux :(

What I have not tried is to delete the Mac OS X partition as you
suggested. So today I will install YDL without Mac OS X server and
tell you what appends.

Yesterday I get an idea what else could be the reason for my problem.
I read about yaboot, that I need the !newest! yaboot for the Xserve.
So if nothing works I try to boot my installed system with the
OpenFirmware or with the install-cd's boot-promt.

Thank you for any further suggestions!

bYe, Andi