Just curious

[mascarasnake]

Hey Doug -

GDB-B&W-YDL3.0.1 wrote:

> 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

That's gotta be the most bizarre partition map I've seen. I'm assuming 
you didn't go and rearrange things just to screw with me. ;)

Your partition numbers are, obviously, not sequential. I don't know, but 
that could be your problem. Keep in mind - this is just guessing.

When you reset your nvram, the OF gets reset to see hda9 as the first 
blessed partition. When you boot into OS 9, somehow your OF is getting 
tricked into thinking that is no longer the case, gets really confused 
and locks you into OS 9.

> 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?  

Like Daniel said in his post, having the bootstrap partition first isn't 
necessary. It can be anywhere (even on anther disk - theoretically), as 
long as the OF knows that's what is supposed to be booted. I just always 
say *has* to be first after the drivers so that resetting the nvram can 
get you back into linux. Saves a lot of heavy explaining to folks who 
just want the dang thing to work.

But the answer to your question is "pretty easy" if you're not afraid of 
pdisk. One of the top level commands is 'r' that allows you to reorder a 
partition without destroying the data. as root just run:
	pdisk /dev/hda
	at the prompt enter 'p' to get your map
	at the prompt enter 'r'
	at the prompt enter the partition you want to reorder
	at the prompt enter the new partition number
	at the prompt enter 'p' just to double check the change
	at the prompt enter 'w' to write your change(s)
	at the prompt enter 'y' to confirm

but looking at your map, it's already reading as hda9, just listed in 
the wrong sequence, so I don't know how much good that would do. You 
could set yaboot.conf to point to the new bootstrap partition, but if 
you have to reset the nvram again, your poopoo'd and this time have to 
go mucking about in the OF to set things right.

> 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.

IMHO, that sounds like the route I would go. If you can back up your mac 
side to another disk and start from a clean drive, you could get that 
partition map fixed. You might want to hang out to see and see what 
other "HO's" are, but them's my pennies. CCC is a great backup app by 
the way. I've been using it and psync for about 8 months now, with 
bi-monthly backups - no problems.

g'luck

-- 
     It's what you make it man
     Takes time
     A little bit
     A little bit more

             -The Minutemen

dontdrill@earthlink.net