Can I use my existing disk partitions?

[Andrew Stout]

>I've got a 450 MHz G4 with a single 80 gig IDE drive that I've split 
>into 4 20-gig partitions.  I've got MacOS-8.6 on the first 
>partition, some data on the 2nd, and the other two are empty.  I 
>want to install YD-2.3 on the box. I've done RedHat/Intel installs, 
>but this is my first attempt at Linux on a Mac.
>
>It's not clear to me from reading the instructions if my current 
>disk partitions are going to work, or if I need to repartition the 
>drive.

You'll need to repartition the part you want to install YDL on.  You 
could, with the proper disk partitioning utility, keep the MacOS-8.6 
partition and the second partition, and put YDL on the remaining 
space.  Assuming those first two partitions are physically next to 
each other.

Beware, the YDL installer disk partitioner is shit.  You can work 
with it, but you kinda have to know how.  There are two main problems 
with it:  it won't let you install YDL on partitions created by 
anything other than the YDL installer partitioner, and it crashes if 
you try to delete partitions and create partitions in the same run. 
So what you'd want to do is 1. run the YDL installer up to the 
partition step, 2. delete the empty partitions you want to put YDL 
on, 3. quit the installer, 4. go through the installer again, this 
time, 5. create the partitions for YDL as you see fit, and proceed as 
you'd expect.  There's a slightly more detailed version of this 
process in the archives of the general list...I posted it for 
somebody a few months back.

>Also, I don't have a CD-ROM burner, but I do have plenty of free 
>disk space!  Do I really need to burn a install CD, or can I just 
>put the CD image on a spare partition and install from that?

not sure about this one, I've never done it except by burning.

HTH,

--Andrew Stout