reboot after installation fails

[Andreas Pack]

>> 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):

> That simply isn't true.  The only operating system that requires those 
> special partitions to be present is MacOS 9 (or earlier), because they 
> are MacOS 9 device drivers that 9 needs to mount or boot data 
> partitions on that disk.  If you partition a disk using the OS X Disk 
> Utility, there is an option to not create them.  I have booted both OS 
> X and Linux off drives that have only two or three partitions because 
> none of the MacOS9 driver partitions are present.

Ok, now I can say much more...

I think you're right Tim, because I tried to install YDL with Mac OS X
server on the Xserve. The result was that Linux does not boot as
default, but Mac OS X instead without a prompt. The OpenFirmware
obviously knows nothing about the bootstrap-partiton (where yaboot
should exists), wich I created with the YDL installation (10 MB).
Instead of trying any further installations I decided to boot the
installed system like this at the boot-prompt of the YDL install-cd:

boot: cd:,/install/vmlinux root=/dev/hde12
(hde12 is the root partition YDL)

Booting this root partition was NO problem - I was delighted. Then I
logged in as root and tried to run "ybin" additionally. And now it's
interesting: I get an error that there is no path in the OpenFirmware
found to the bootstrap-partition (/dev/hde10) and that I should use
use ofboot=<path> in yaboot.conf. After that I tried to get the
OpenFirmware path with the command ofpath, but it was not able to get
this path...
Now I remembered one hint I've read in the debian's installation
manual: "you have to download the newest yaboot to boot on an Xserve"
Hmmmm... Debian uses the same yaboot version so I downloaded the
newest version. Lo and behold, it now works. My yaboot.conf looks now
like this:

# ybin options
ofboot=/pci@f2000000/AppleKiwi@15/@0/disk@0:10
boot=/dev/hde10
macosx=/pci@f2000000/AppleKiwi@15/@0/disk@0:9
magicboot=/usr/lib/yaboot/ofboot
delay=10
defaultos=linux
enablecdboot

<...the rest is standard...>

Now ybin works, but it said that the bootstrap-partition is not
initialized and that I have to use mkofboot instead. And this command
saves my day, because everything works now: Linux will boot
automatically as default :)

But it's strange, isn't it? There is someone who installed YDL
successful and after installation there was no boot-problem at all.
What have I done wrong in the installation-setup?
I now know a way to install YDL on the Xserve, but I would be glad if
there is a more easy way :-|

Thank you for any suggestions!

Bye, Andi