yellowdog-newbie Digest, Vol 5, Issue 33

[Eric Dunbar]

On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 09:06:04 +1100, Peter Gort wrote:
> Tom,
> 
> yaboot is in Open Firmware, which is not usually reset by Mac OS X
> installer.  To revert to normal firmware settings, you need to "zap
> PRAM".  To do this, restart the computer and hold down the cmd(apple) -
> option - p - r key combination.  After a few seconds of holding down
> that combination of keys, the computer will spontaneously reboot.  Keep
> holding down those keys until the computer has spontaneously rebooted a
> total of 3 times.
> 
> That should remove yaboot routine from the Open Firmware.  If the
> problem still persists (unlikely) you can edit the open firmware
> settings, send me a message if you need to know how to do that.
> 
> HTH,
> Peter

Unfortunately for Tom, if Tom followed recommended procedure,
command-option-p-r will only dump him back into yaboot, yet again b/c
yaboot will be the first partition ;-).

A few solutions I can think of for you (Tom):
1.hold down the option key at reboot time to bring up the OpenFirmware
OS selector (temporary hack, pointless with one OS and yaboot);
2. in OS X, go to the Startup Disk System preferences pane and
re-select your OS X partition as the startup disk. This will rewrite
your PRAM to use OS X. Problem: If you ever command-option-P-R again
you will have yaboot taking over the boot process again;
3. delete the yaboot partition using pdisk from the OS X Terminal.app.
To activate pdisk you will have to type sudo pdisk. ? in pdisk will
display the help listing. Please note, however, that using pdisk is a
dangerous thing. If you make a mistake you can easily destroy your OS
X partition;
4. fire up Disk Utility (I think that's what it's called... I'm in
Ubuntu so I can't check ;) and reformat the YellowDogLinux partition
to OS X thereby reclaiming the space you used for YDL (you may have to
use pdisk to get things started by destroying YellowDogLInux
partition);
5. REINSTALL OS X *yet again* but this time make sure that you format
the whole drive before you proceed with the install (don't use
reformat the OS X partition). Make sure you have access to *all* HD
space that your HD will give you (right now you're probably missing a
few GB).

Eric.