yellowdog-newbie Digest, Vol 5, Issue 33

[mascarasnake]

Hey Tom and Donna -

Tom Bombaci Jr wrote:
> We're installing on Mac OS X 10.3.7.
> Now, another twist: I reinstalled 10.3.7 to get rid of the squirrelly  
> YDL installation, and, now, I still get the yaboot screen, even tough  
> YDL is not on the system any more (I did an erase and install, so there  
> should have been a clean installation of OS X).  The yaboot defaults to  
> Linux, so I end up with having to restart the system if I don't watch  
> closely enough.

As a couple folks have suggested, it sounds as though you've simply 
reinstalled Panther without formatting the entire drive. Not a biggie 
tho. You should be able to fix your YDL install.

>>> After selecting "l" from yaboot, the YDL installation begins to
>>> boot.
>>> After a few seconds, however, I get this error message, and nothing
>>> else
>>> happens:
>>> (this is after "Please wait, loading kernel...")
>>>
>> "/pci at 80000000/pci-bridge at d/pci-ata at 1/@0/disk at 0:11,/vmlinux-2.6.8 
>> -1.ydl.7:
>>
>>>
>>> Unknown or corrupt filesystem"

The error message that you get when booting into Linux is more than 
likely the result of 'yaboot' looking in the wrong partition for the 
Linux kernel. It's the language/address the OF looks for to boot the 
system - no matter what OS(s) are installed. The important part is the 
"disk at 0:11". This basically says that 'yaboot' is looking for the kernel 
on your master disk (or only disk) on partition 11.


Here's a way to suss it all out and fix things:

1) Boot into Panther, open up Terminal.app and do a 'pdisk' dump:

	sudo pdisk /dev/rdisk0 -dump

The resulting partition map should *include* the following three 
partitions that YDL uses:

	Apple_HFS Apple_Bootstrap          10240000 @ 47105216 (  1.0M)
	Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap              655360 @ 1216     (320.0M)
	Apple_UNIX_SVR2 untitled        46448640 @ 656576   ( 22.1G)

If partition 11 is the untitled partition, you might want to consider 
wiping the entire disk clean and starting over or just using YDL's 
installer to reinstall, choosing the "erase all linux partitions" 
option. If partition 11 is any other partition, then we need to point 
yaboot to the "untitled partition", which is the the next step. (you 
might want to print your 'pdisk' dump or make note of your partitions - 
you'll need them).

2) Boot into the first YDL install CD. When you get to the boot prompt, 
type in:

	linux rescue

This will boot you into, well, rescue mode, allowing you to fix your 
'yaboot.conf' file.

Using your fave text editor, open up your '/etc/yaboot.conf' file. 
You'll get a file that looks something like this:

boot=/dev/hda12
device=/pci at 80000000/pci-bridge at d/pci-ata at 1/@0/disk at 0:
init-message="Welcome to Yellow Dog Linux!\nHit <TAB> for boot options.\n\n"
partition=13
timeout=30
install=/usr/lib/yaboot/yaboot
magicboot=/usr/lib/yaboot/ofboot
default=linux

image=/boot/vmlinux-2.4.22-2g
         label=linux
         root=/dev/hda13
         read-only
         initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.22-2g.img
         append="hdb=ide-scsi"

macosx=/dev/hda9
macos=/dev/hda11
defaultos=macosx
delay=10
enablecdboot
enableofboot

Don't take any of the above values as is. More than likely, your values 
are for the most part correct, and all you'll really need to look at are 
the values for "partition=x" in the first section and "root=/dev/hdax" 
under the "image =" section. Change these values to the partition number 
that we got from the 'pdisk' dump (if it was 10 then "partition=10" and 
"root=/dev/hda10"). Save the file.

3) Whenever you make changes to your 'yaboot.conf' file, you need to 
pass those changes on to yaboot itself. This is done with 'ybin'. type in:

	ybin -v

4) reboot the system:

	reboot -ip

When you type "l" to boot into Linux, it should find the kernel it needs 
to get you going.

cheers, g'luck and all that good stuff

-- 
     It's what you make it man
     Takes time
     A little bit
     A little bit more

             -The Minutemen

dontdrill at earthlink.net