Problems Booting YDL From a Firewire Drive

[Ken Tompkins]

>If I understand you correctly you are getting the option boot screen 
>after selecting your boot option in yaboot? If you are getting the 
>open firmware boot screen after selecting an option in yaboot, you 
>may have a hardware issue. I would definatly suggest resetting open 
>fireware and possibly running apple hardware tests. Unfortunatly 
>apple hardware test does not always show you errors or failures that 
>do no fail during the test, but you may get lucky. I have found that 
>installing OSX or Yellowdog will sometimes bring forth hardware 
>issues that have been there but may have seemed to be software 
>problems. I hope this information is helpful to you.
>Reset open fireware
>Hold Apple - Option - O - F immediatly after turning the unit on.
>At the prompt type reset-all and hit return.
>The machine will reboot and you can try again.

I apologize for not being clearer and more precise.

The only way I can get to the firewire drive is to boot with the 
Option key pressed.
This brings me into a GUI interface where all three of my drives are 
represented by
icons: (1) for the main drive; (2) for the data drive and (3) for YDL. When
I select the YDL to boot -- and then click on the arrow pointing 
right -- I THEN get
the black screen with the selections of L for Linux or C for the CD 
drive. I expect
that when I type "L" YDL will boot.

Instead, when I type "L", I am taken back to the GUI screen -- only 
this time the labels of the
drives are black boxes -- and, while the cursor moves, nothing else 
can be done.

I tried the reset procedure sometime ago but it didn't fix it.

At no time when I boot do I see the yaboot screen with the various 
boot options.

Noberto Quinanar pointed out that by installing YDL when the drive 
was actually in
the main machine and then moving the drive to a firewire enclosure has changed
the yaboot.conf file so that it no longer points at the drive. 
Because I cannot boot
into YDL as long as it is on the firewire, I will need to bring the 
drive back into the
machine and edit the conf file. I haven't done this yet.

I hope this is clear about what is happening here. As I said, it 
ought not to be
this difficult.

kt
-- 


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                            Kenneth Tompkins
                        Professor of Literature
                  Richard Stockton College of NJ
                                Homepage
http://loki.stockton.edu/~ken/homepage/homepage.htm
                    Deserted Medieval Village:
http://loki.stockton.edu/~ken/wharram/wharram.htm
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