On Thu, Jul 06, 2000 at 08:01:14PM -0400, Brian Almeida wrote: > Ok, I've been reading the list archives all day and I'm at least a little > more familiar with the process, but still am not certain. > > I've recently acquired a G4 through work. It's got a zip disk and 2 18GB scsi > disks. Right now MacOS 9 is on disk 1, and disk 2 is empty. I'd like to have > one disk for MacOS and the other for Debian. My question is, do I need to > blow > away the first drive in order to set up the bootstrap partition, or can I do > it
the bootstrap partition must be the first partition on the first disk lest you be forced to dick around in OpenFirmware. i would reccommend giving the entire first disk to Debian and the second disk to MacOS. this way the first disk need not have all that driver partition garbage. and you won't have to fsck with OF. > on the second drive, and then use the mac control panel to tell it to boot off > the second drive? Or do I need to wipe the first drive, then create a no you cannot use the macos control panel to dual boot. > bootstrap partition, then install macos, then install debian on the second > drive? The machine is fairly pristine, and I have the MacOS 9 install disk. > I you can have the bootstrap partition on the first disk and debian on the second, but i do not reccommend it. you would have to figure out the OpenFirmware path for the second disk. which is a royal fscking pain in the arse. if you dedicate the first disk to debian you can just use hd: in yaboot.conf and leave OF at its default settings to boot. much much simpler. > also have a potato CD that I made today from yesterday's archive, but it is > not > bootable (I forgot to have hfsutils installed). What would be the recommended > course of action here? I really have no preference what OS goes on what disk. debian dedicated to the first disk, use mac-fdisk and blow away the entire partition table, get rid of all that macos driver partition junk. create bootstrap first (Apple_Bootstrap 800K) then the rest of the linux partitions. as for the CD, do it again and make a bootable one. it makes things much easier. you can setup yaboot on the zip disk but you have to dick around in OF to boot it. with a bootable CD you just boot it like a macos CD. you should never even have to enter OpenFirmware at all. > This is my first real stab at installing a dual-boot machine on a platform > other than i386, so I may be unaware of the capabilities of the mac hardware. > Advice/Suggestions/etc appreciated. see above. if you follow my advice your experience won't be much different from an i386, if you don't then it will be very painful and you will begin to see intel hardware as very elegant and modern and easy unlike powerpcs ;-) please see my yaboot docs at my web page (see .sig) and my debian install docs addendums at: http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/debian/ -- Ethan Benson http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/
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