Just curious
GDB-B&W-YDL3.0.1
yellowdog-general@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com
Sat, 18 Sep 2004 16:58:35 -0400
mascarasnake wrote:
> hey Doug -
>
> GDB-B&W-YDL3.0.1 wrote:
>
>> In an effort to understand what is happening when yaboot starts my
>> computer, I have looked at the partition map of the HD (80 Gb Maxtor
>> IDE) and found the following. hda1-8 are all less than 1 Mb and
>> take up the first 2 sectors of the HD.
>
>
> These are the drivers that are necessary for that disk to access The
> Mac OS(s). If you only had OS X on that drive, you would only have the
> first partition (Apple_partition_map) and a very small free space. The
> rest are the drivers for OS 9.
>
> Next there is a 128 Mb free space.
>
> This should be hda9. After this partition, you should have placed your
> 'Apple_Bootstrap' partition (making the partition that yaboot should
> reside hda10)
>
>> hda10 is an hfs+ partition and is 31011 Mb in size. This is my OSX
>> partition. Then another 128 Mb free space. hda12 is also an hfs+
>> partition and is 5997 Mb in size. This is my OS9 partition. hda9 is
>> the yaboot hfs partition and is 1 Mb in size.
>
>
> This is where I get confused. From what you said above, right after
> parts 1-8, there is a free 128MB part. I can't see how that free space
> (which should be hda9) could also be your bootstrap partition (which
> should be and hfs part).
>
> If I may suggest, copy, paste and post the actual pdisk output so we
> can see what exactly is going on. You also might want to take a look at:
> <http://www.sharplabs.com:8668/space/Installing+YDL/BootX%2C+Yaboot+and+the+OF>
> and a couple of links at the bottom that can get you the really nitty
> gritty (Booting Mac OS X link and the penguinppc yaboot how to).
>
> hda11 is my 1000 Mb linux
>
>> swap partition and hda13 is my 10000 Mb ext3 YDL partition. This
>> leaves 29901 Mb of free space at the end of the drive.
>
>
> <snipped your yaboot.conf file>
>
>>
>> My question is, shouldn't the yaboot partition be at the very
>> beginning of the drive?
>
>
> yaboot needs to come after the drivers (the first partition after
> 'Apple_Patches' and before any other bootable partition.
>
> In other words, what makes the computer go all the way
>
>> down to the hda9 partiton to start?
>
>
> Check out those links. I give a simplistic version on the FAQ, you can
> get the real technical reason at the "Booting Mac OS X" link. I'd
> still like to see your actual pdisk output, tho.
>
> I feel this is part of the reason
>
>> why I can't boot out of OS9 once I boot into it, but don't understand
>> why this doesn't happen when I boot into YDL or OSX. Sorry if this
>> is a newbie type question, but I'm used to PC drives where the MBR
>> resides at the beginning of the drive.
>>
>> Just a message from Doug...
>
>
>
> g'luck
>
Okay, got my grass mowed and some other Saturday chores done, now where
were we. Ah yes, the partition map dump from pdisk:
Partition map (with 512 byte blocks) on '/dev/hda'
#: 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
14: Apple_Free Extra 262144 @ 1824 (128.0M)
10: Apple_HFS "Present" 63510328 @ 263968 ( 30.3G)
15: Apple_Free Extra 262144 @ 63774296 (128.0M)
12: Apple_HFS "Past" 12282640 @ 64036440 ( 5.9G)
9: Apple_Bootstrap untitled 2048 @ 76319080 ( 1.0M)
11: Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap 2048000 @ 76321128 (1000.0M)
13: Apple_UNIX_SVR2 untitled 20480000 @ 78369128 ( 9.8G)
16: Apple_Free Extra 61237400 @ 98849128 ( 29.2G)
Device block size=512, Number of Blocks=160086528 (76.3G)
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0
Drivers-
1: 23 @ 64, type=0x1
2: 36 @ 120, type=0xffff
3: 21 @ 176, type=0x701
4: 34 @ 232, type=0xf8ff
As you can see, it's pretty much the way I said earlier so my question
is, how difficult would it be to move the bootstrap partition to where
hda14 is? I have not had time to read all of the links you provided,
but I would think that 128 Mb free space should be plenty of room for
the 1 Mb bootstrap partition. Is it just a matter of setting up the 1
Mb Apple bootstrap partition in the free space and changing yaboot.conf
and then running ybin to reflect the new setup? I've downloaded Carbon
Copy Cloner and plan to experiment with it some to see how difficult it
would be to just redo the system. I would like to keep my OSX partition
the way it is, but the rest doesn't really matter all that much.
Just a message from Doug...