[OT] - Downloadable Mac OS

[Alexander Holst]

Am 14.10.2004 um 05:06 schrieb 
yellowdog-general-request at lists.terrasoftsolutions.com:

> Message: 3
> Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 16:00:49 -0400
> From: Rick Thomas <rbthomas55 at pobox.com>
> Subject: Re: [OT] - Downloadable Mac OS
> To: Yellow Dog Linux General Discussion List
> 	<yellowdog-general at lists.terrasoftsolutions.com>
> Message-ID: <93F343CC-1D52-11D9-9010-000393DED12E at pobox.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
>
> Brian,
>
> Can you post the URL for the version of miboot that takes an external
> config file?

http://apple.fh-pforzheim.de/Linux/files/README.Boot_Linux.html

another bit of info can be found here:

http://www.shiner.info/?info/miboot.txt

It's not really readable easily, as it resembles a quick copy 'n paste 
from a mail I posted to this list on Tue, 8 Apr 2003 14:03:04 +0200 - 
so maybe, you want to search the archives - the thread was: "Re: miboot 
documentation? (really minimal BootX)"

The stuffed volume image of my boot partition contains such a version 
of miBoot _and_ a preconfigured boot.conf file. In case you do have an 
OldWorld Mac, I'd recomend to use a file called boot.conf in the root 
level of your HFS boot partition, instead of the yaboot.conf file in 
the System folder. It does work as well, and I have't had any problems 
booting all my OldWorld Macs this way - even my Performa 5200 running 
YDL 3.0.1 ;) When writing that mini-how-to, I had the goal to create a 
miBoot/yaboot boot partition that would boot OldWorld & NewWorld Macs. 
Since then, yaboot has evolved a lot, and I do not believe that it 
is/will ever be possible to create a boot partiton for Linux, that will 
boot all Macs - so I dropped that idea.

The mini-how-to is a bit outdated, but basically still applies to YDL 
3.0.x. I did a complete fresh install of YDL 3.0 on my Beige G3, 
booting the installer kernel via miBoot. The only problem is the 
chicken-egg situation, to initially get the boot partition set up. I 
usually do that, booted from the MacOS 8.1 Install CD, that came with 
the box, and a ZIP drive, that contains all the neccessary stuff that 
has to go on that partition. You could probably boot from a floppy, and 
use a CD (like the famous LinuxPPC 2000 Q4 CD and the YDL CDs) to 
achieve this as well.

In case the miBoot version contained in the boot volume image, 
mentioned in the above link, isn't working, let me know, I will then 
make a new disk image of my present boot partition (without yaboot, but 
with the current YDL kernels) and put it online instead.

> To make a bootable CD that will work on OldWorld machines, one needs to
> create a partitioned CD:  The first partition is (of course -- as for
> all Mac partitioned media) the partition map; the second and third
> partitions are drivers for SCSI and IDE CD-ROM drives.  After that, you
> can put an HFS format partition with an appropriately blessed miboot in
> it, and follow that up with one or more ext2 partitions from your
> favorite Linux install.
>
> The reason no PowerPC Linux distro provides such a CD is that the
> drivers are Apple proprietary code.  The commercial houses that sell
> bootable CDs all (presumably) pay Apple for a license.
>
> I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me that if I owned a legally licensed
> copy of a MacOS9 install CD, I could -- for my own private use within
> the privacy of my own home -- legally copy the relevant driver
> partitions off of it to make an OldWorld bootable Linux CD-ROM.  I
> think it would be a fun experiment, but I haven't tried it.
>
> If anybody has tried it, how did it work?

Basically, what the LinuxPPC guys did back then, was to have one 
folder/partition that then was mastered as a Hybrid CD (HFS/ISO 9660). 
In case you have access to one of these CDs, you'll recognize, that all 
the long filenames for the RPMs are cut to 31 chars, when seen under 
MacOS, whereas they appear complete when mounted under Linux and that 
the complete filesystem tree is identical on the HFS and the ISO side 
;)

It should actually be possible to master such a CD with 
mkisofs/cdrecord from the Linux side, as it allows one to create hybrid 
CDs and also allows one to specify a "blessed" System folder as well. 
You can even have the MacOS window layout being reflected - all you 
have to do is to have netatalk/afpd running, mount the folder/partition 
under MacOS and arrange your Mac Finder windows to your favour. Then 
tell mkisofs to use the netatalk meta data for the creation of the HFS 
part ;) It certainly works as stated in the man pages of mkisofs.

> Are there any lawyers on the list?  Is it legal to post a detailed
> description of the procedure?

When using mkisofs & cdrecord, the whole szenario should be legal, 
shouldn't it? I have no idea though, how mkisofs in combination with 
cdrecord get around the driver issue, but maybe, CD-ROMs need no driver 
partitions in order to be recognized by the Mac - whether they can be 
bootable without driver partitions, I don't know - I never tried that.

Alex


Alexander Holst
Pforzheim University of Applied Sciences
<holst [at] fh-pforzheim [dot] de>
ph: +49 [0]7231 28-6837
fx: +49 [0]7231 28-6040