yaboot won't boot OS X

[Paolo G. Cordone]

>Hello,
>
>      I just finished getting all of my yellow dog 3.0 installation up and
>running, but it seems that now I can't get yaboot or open firmware to boot
>my OS X partition.  I find this strange because I have no problem booting
>this OS X partition through mac-on-linux, nor did I have a problem booting
>this with YellowDog 2.3.  When I try to boot the OS X partition from the
>yaboot prompt I get the following error: "DEFAULT CATCH, code=fffffff6."  My
>yaboot.conf file and the output of pdisk -l follow.  I am running YellowDog
>3.0 on a 2002 15" PowerBook g4.  Any insight into this problem would be
>greatly appreciated.
>
>Thanks,
>Jay

Jay,

I have had the same problem, although I use an OldWorld Mac (G3 beige 
desktop) at work. After installing YDL 3 onto a second hard disk, my 
main HD containing OS X 10.2.5 became unusable. By this I mean that 
when I boot up, the open firmware screen comes up with a DEFAULT 
CATCH message you get which prevents me from booting into X. I get 
the 'bye' option of continuing using classic (which lets me boot off 
a CD), but if I try the 'boot' with the default device, it tells me 
that the CLAIM cannot be executed. Typing 'reset-all' did not work.

If I boot off classic, I can see all the files on the hard disk 
itself, so data has not been lost. I am not so sure how to reset the 
firmware.
In one of the howtos, there is some explanation about doing something 
similar for yaboot and NewWorld machines. It says to type 'printenv' 
and then 'setenv boot-device hd:x,\\:tbxi', with 'x' indicating the 
partition to boot from.

Have you tried that? I am at home now and will return to my office 
only on Tuesday, as we have a long weekend here in Ireland, but I am 
a bit anxious that I will have to re-install OS X, plus upgrades and 
all the applications I had, if nothing will bring back my hard disk.

Let me know if you find a solution.

Ciao,

Paolo
-- 
Paolo G. Cordone
Book Review Editor
First Monday - the peer-reviewed journal on the Internet
http://www.firstmonday.org


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