Shared Partition Quick Guide

[ron]

Here is a quick guide to partitioning and formating your drive for use
with YDL and OS X (or you can substitute OS 9) with a "Shared" partition
to share data between the two OSes. This guide uses the Disk Utility on
the Mac OS X CD, but you can do the same thing with an OS 9 Disk 
Utility,
but some of the terms and button labels may be slightly different on the
interface. This example is also written directly for a New World ROM
machine and yaboot for YDL 3.0, but you should be able to use it for an
Old World ROM machine simply by making an additional partition for OS 9
and BootX.

Having a partition to share between the two OSes installed on your 
machine
is a convenient place to store data that you will want to access from 
both
Linux and Mac OS. The partition can cause some confusion when using MOL 
so
be sure to read the section on mounting the partition if you plan to use
MOL.

If you need more in depth help than outlined below, please refer to the
more detailed installation guide avalable in PDF format at:

http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/support/installation/


Boot from a Mac OS installation CD by holding down the "c" key while the
cd is in the drive.

If it is a Mac OS X CD the installer will boot. At the first screen, do
not push the "continue" button yet. Go up to File -> Open Disk Utility

Partition tab, then under Volume Scheme select 3 Partitions (or however
many you need) from the dropdown menu. You then need to size and name 
the
partitions.

For example, I have a 20GB drive partitioned as follows:

Partition 1: OSX Mac OS Extended  4.60GB
Partition 2: Extra Free Space     11.51GB
Partition 3: Shared Mac OS Standard 2.50GB

The Mac OS X disk utility would not let me change the name of the Free
Space, it had to be either Extra or blank.

Press "Partition" and let it go.

When it is finished quit the Disk Utility and you will be back at the 
OS X
installation screen. Press continue and follow the directions. Make sure
you select the OSX drive to install on and not the Shared drive.


When the OS X installation is finished, insert the YDL installation 1 cd
and boot from it by holding down the "c" key while starting up.

Follow the instructions and when the installer gets to Disk Setup,select
the partition with Free Space to install Linux. It is a really, REALLY
good idea to write down the device names and what is on them at this
point!!

For instance, I partitioned mine as follows (no, you do not necessarily 
need as many as I have):

Device Name		Filesystem		Linux Mount Point (or what it is used for)

/dev/hda1		Apple			(used by the drive)
/dev/hda2		hfs			(for OS X)
/dev/hda3		Apple Bootstrap		(for yaboot)
/dev/hda4		hfs			(the Shared Partition)
/dev/hda5		ext3			/home
/dev/hda6		ext3			/
/dev/hda7		swap			swap
/dev/hda8		ext3			/var
/dev/hda9		ext3			/usr


Finish up the installation, log in, play around, make sure everything 
is working as you think it should. You are then ready to mount the 
partition so that it can be used by both OSes.

Mounting the shared partition:

As mentioned earlier there can be conflict between Linux and MOL if you 
are going to use MOL. If you are planning to use MOL read the next 
section, if are not planning to use MOL you may skip over it.

MOL will automatically mount the shared partition and it will appear as 
a second disk drive on the desktop (of both OS 9 and OS X). This means 
that you have a decision to make. You can either have Linux 
automatically mount the shared partition when it boots and use it right 
away, or you can manually mount it when you want to use it in Linux. If 
the partition is mounted in Linux, then it cannot be used by MOL, so 
you have to unmount it before you start MOL. So, if Linux automatically 
mounts it at boot, you will need to remember to manually unmount it 
before starting MOL. Otherwise you will have to remember to manually 
mount it when you want to use it in Linux (and also remember to unmount 
it before starting MOL).

If you want to mount the shared partition manually you need to create a 
mount point for it (/shared in this example) and make an entry in 
/etc/fstab. You need to be root to do these tasks:

mkdir /shared

then you need to make the following entry in /etc/fstab using your 
/dev/hdax and mountpoint):

/dev/hda4		/shared		hfs		noauto,users,rw

(contrary to most documentation you read, if you put the 2 numerals 
that most other entries have, it probably will not work. It would not 
work for me when I tried to use them)

Then as a normal user you can mount and unmount the partition:

mount /shared
umount /shared


If you want Linux to automatically mount it at boot time:

Create a mount point as described above.
Add the following line to /etc/fstab:

/dev/hda4		/shared		hfs		auto,rw


I plan to put this procedure into YDL HOWTO format and submit it to the 
YDL maintainers for distribution.

Please provide feedback, corrections or direct questions to: 
ronsmith@ydl.net