Problems Booting YDL From a Firewire Drive

[Ray]

For what it's worth, I think this is what happened:
1. Installation began as normal. THE INSTALLER SET A CERTAIN 
DRIVE/PARTITION ON THE ATA BUS AS THE STARTUP.
2. Installation complete, now Linux works normally booting off of the 
ATA bus specified in the configuration file.
3. Drive is moved to Firewire case. LINUX IS NO LONGER AT THE LOCATION 
SPECIFIED BY THE CONFIGURATION FILE.
4. Option menu finds the boot partition and displays it as the Linux 
boot drive. (Linux is actually on a different, larger partition; the 
boot partition is the thing that loads Linux or whatever OS you wish to 
operate.)
5. Yaboot works normally from the boot partition, but is working with a 
flawed pref file. (I think, that since Mac OS X has not moved, you 
should be able to boot into OS X from the yaboot menu, but)
6. Attempts to load Linux fails because of the broken link.

To solve:
1. Find the proper Linux partition and fix the link in the yaboot 
configuration file. Upload these changes to the boot partition.

OR

2. Backup files by accessing them from OS X (use an ext2 filesystem for 
Mac OS X; I use Brian Bergstrand's program), then reinstall Linux.


On Apr 13, 2005, at 4:33 PM, Ken Tompkins wrote:

>> 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
> -- 
>
>
> ===========================================
>                            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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