reconfiguring yaboot after osx install

[Eric D.]

on 29/4/02 02:32, mutex at mutex@mac.com wrote:

> To get to the OF prompt, i *think* you hold down command-option-O-F at boot
> time.

<snip>
 
>> boot hd9:\\yaboot
> 
> where 9, is the number of your ydl "boot" partition.  That should get
> you to the yaboot prompt where you can load your system normally.  Once
> you have it loaded, just run ybin as root.. and your default boot
> partition should be set to yaboot again.
> good luck
> 
> On Sun, 2002-04-28 at 22:38, Chris Saunders wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> After YDL 2.2 was working wonderfully for me, I put OS X back on my
>> first partion.  Now of course, OSX monopolizes the system and I've lost
>> my beautiful yaboot startup prompts!  How do I make yaboot the active
>> boot manager again?

<chuckle> (this isn't directed at you Chris or to suggest that you are
ignorant of computers!!!) People seem so indignant that their computer does
what they tell it to (I too was annoyed to say the least before I figured it
out). Probably 99% of Macs out there will never run anything more than OS X
and OS 9 (or multiple installs of X/9/8/7) so it's only reasonable that the
OS tell the OpenFirmware (or the PRAM) to use a particular boot disk
(especially when booting up CDs). The yaboot partition doesn't contain the
right files/format for the Startup disk software to recognise it as a
startup disk (or a disk for that matter) so it simply won't work (unless
yaboot's creators want to hack around it... I don't think it'd be worth it
but it would be wise for YellowDog to explicitly tell people how to deal
with it).

Anyway, here's a post that should allow you to fix things (if you can't get
ybin to do whatever it's supposed to do (I've never used it... I just go
straight to OpenFirmware... simple)):



Eric's summary of the Open FirmWare commands.
To set boot device: setenv boot_device hd:9,ofboot.b
To boot a device temporarily: boot hd:9,ofboot.b
boot hd:9,yaboot

From: Ben Stanley <bds02@uow.edu.au>
Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2002 14:59:40 +1100
Subject: Re: Open Firmware, "blessing" partitions & restarting

The yaboot documentation says that the boot partition should not ever be
mounted, especially by OS X, becuase it 'un-blesses' it.

You should boot Linux off the CD (see the engineer's notes at the bottom
of the Yellow Dog installation instruction page) and then re-run ybin to
fix this.

And, btw, I've had problems with the yaboot that comes with ydl 2.1. I
recently upgraded to the more recent one in the yellow dog updates
directory, and the problems went away. (One of my problems was with
ext3, but I don't know what caused the other problems.)

And as for mounting hfs partitions from Linux, I don't recommend that -
the kernel hfs implementation has suffered bit-rot. Use hfsutils instead.

Ben.

on 4/3/02 22:49, Eric D. at liriodendron@mac.com wrote:

> Hello ya'll, I've run into a little bit of a problem here. Somewhere in
> booting an OS X installer disk (to do a verify), booting Norton Systemworks CD
> & defragging the two Mac partitions I've lost the boot loader.
> 
> One interesting side-effect of Norton Disk Doctoring the OS X partition was
> that OS X now sees the "boot" partition on its desktop. Can the "boot"
> partition be used to transfer files back-and-forth between OS X & Linux & is
> it a dangerous idea to do so? (I'll find out soon enough if it's easy to
> access boot on the Linux side (provided I get Linux back up and running)).
> 
> L8r, Eric.
> 
> on 28/2/02 9:08, Jonathan Singer at jsinger@genome.wi.mit.edu wrote:
> 
>>> (6) If I set a Mac OS partition as a startup disk I lose the ability to boot
>>> the Linux partition. How can I reset the Linux parition as a startup
>>> partition (with yaboot... don't quite understand how that works but I
>>> presume it's the boot loader).
>> 
>> I have this too. (It has to do with "blessing" of partitions.) My fix is to
>> boot into Open Firmware (cmd-opt-O-F) and do a 'boot hd:x,yaboot' where x is
>> your root partition number. (Or is the boot partition number? I forget.) Run
>> ybin as root once you've logged in.
>> 
>> Is there a better method? The real answer is to create separate OS 9 and OS X
>> partitions and use yaboot to pick one or the other. For space reasons, I
>> don't want to do that.