[ydl-gen] Problem with yaboot/YDL 4.0.1

[Derick Centeno]

Ok.

I'm not clear what "I told YDL" actually means in this context.

Does it mean that you bought the system directly from Terra Soft and 
spoke to someone there regarding what you wanted?
That however may be unlikely, as they are very good at not making this 
kind of error.

Or do you mean you merely started the YDL installation on the Mac 
without preparing the installed mac hardware to be able to use YDL?
My intuition tells me that this is probably what you did.

You did not boot your Mac so that it ran from your Installer disk.  You 
also did not invoke Disk Utility as instructed.
You did not tell Disk Utility to partition the entire hard drive so 
that there would be 1 partition called Untitled and that partition 
would be formatted by Disk Utility as Free Space.

As you did not do the above that is why you are where you are as 
regards this difficulty.

Linux needs to see that partition created by Disk Utility which Disk 
Utility formats as Free Space.
Then the installation proceeds.

You may not need to know this but the Unix format option within Disk 
Utility exists for an older version of what was years ago known as 
Apple Unix; which is different and predates OS X.  That version of Unix 
doesn't know ext2 or ext3 which Linux does use.  Sometimes a little 
more information helps; sometimes it doesn't.

In this situation, you merely started with the Unix format option in 
Apple's Disk Utility or you thought that merely installing YDL onto a 
Mac whose hard drive is preformatted and loaded with OS X (expecting 
YDL to merely erase it) would just somehow work.

The fault here is a mere lack of understanding the nuances of hard 
drive formatting procedures.  Every Linux installation needs something 
on the hard drive it can see or recognize telling it that it can 
proceed to do things it's way.  If it doesn't see what it expects, it 
doesn't know why and it won't care, nor will it complain or tell you 
something.  It will work as best it can with what it thinks you want it 
to do.  This is exactly where a little knowledge is a dangerous thing 
because you understand one thing and it another and this can go on for 
months and you won't have a clue as to why your installation is so odd 
from every other Linux installation.

Every company, Apple included, formats their hard drive in a 
proprietary manner which only that operating system may use.

Linux by definition is open source which means it's for everyone.  No 
Linux utility has the proprietary codes which each company keeps to 
itself; rather Linux can see when it is allowed to format a drive it's 
way.

In Apple's case, the signal or data Linux needs to see is that the hard 
drive is prepared for Linux as Free Space by the Disk Utility 
application.  Linux doesn't see the information the same way Disk 
Utility does, but it will recognize the Free Space formatting structure 
and treat it differently from the Unix formatting structure.

   If Linux doesn't see the Free Formatting structure as prepared by 
Disk Utility, we arrive where you already are.

It is quite possible that I'm completely wrong but the output you 
originally reported got there somehow, and it is not a normal Linux 
installation, pure and simple.  The directions I supplied prior to this 
email applies for installing only YDL (replacing Mac OS X with YDL) -- 
although sadly Terra Soft's explanation does not emphasize that.  Maybe 
they will highlight or elaborate upon that one day; meanwhile I've also 
wiped out OS X replacing it with YDL (several times); the steps I'm 
discussing and emphasizing -- works.

Best wishes ...

On Feb 28, 2006, at 8:00 AM, Keith Mitchell wrote:

>
>  This machine does *NOT* have Mac OSX installed on it.  I told YDL to 
> clear the partition table and use the whole disk.