> > crash often does that for me). OF seems to default to the first 'blessed'
> > filesystem it can find, that's why having the bootstrap partition first is
> > nicer.
>
> Um. You still have Command-Option-O-F, which will get you to an OF prompt,
> at which point you can do 'boot hd:13,\\:tbxi' (change 13 to whatever the
> partition number of your Apple_Bootstrap partition is) to tell OF where
Tell me :-) The problem is, at that point I usually don't remember the
precise voodoo (where do all these : and , go) and I'm misspelling tbxi
half of the time. Not to mention the number of my bootstrap partition. It
just doesn't happen often enough unless I'm making mistakes with kernel
driver code.
Regardless of what Ethan thinks, I'm a far cry from a clueless newbie.
Now imagine the newbie, having partitioned and set up his system the Wrong
Way (tm), then forgotten about the details such as the number of the
bootstrap partition. If I understand right, no Debian user ever needs to
type in all that OF stuff anymore, it's done by the installer, right? So
how do I get into OF, how do I list the current boot device setting, and
what are all these cryptic ,:\? (Don't tell _me_, rather write a section
for the install guide that covers this in depth. I can't imagine it's
already explained there, the potato OF install section doesn't cut it.)
> specifically to boot from. Yes, if the XPRAM is wiped, OF will just start
> at the first partition and look for the "magic" creator ID ('tbxi') and
> boot the first one it finds, but that doesn't stop you from telling it to
> do something else.
If you know how to do it. Now my understanding is Debian should be useful
to more than just the hardcore technical people, and something like a boot
setup that's self healing in a way (like having a valid yaboot bootstrap
partition _first_ in the map) will help a lot. It's been pointed out on
this list incessantly :-) It's even in the FM I think.
> > Side note: you can move partitions around in the partition map at will.
> > The psrtition order on disk doesn't matter.
>
> Move partitions? What do you mean by that? If you mean having them
> anyplace you want on disk, that's what I just said, isn't it? :)
You can have the bootstrap partition anywhere you like, physically. Like:
I created my bootstrap partition by resizing one of my existing swap
partitions, so I wasn't free in chosing the location. Now the ordering of
partitions in the partition map does _not_ need to correspond to the
physical ordering of these partitions on disk. Moving my bootstrap
partition before the first MockOS partition would be easy to achieve with
the 'r' command - say the current location is 16, and my MockOS partition
is 6, r 16 6 should move it before the MacOS partiton, incrementing all
following partition numbers by one. The PITA is hunting down all of the
spots where you used device names in config files and adapting them :-)
Right after a fresh install, the newbie would just have to change fstab
and yaboot.conf, and never have to worry about OF again.
What you said is it doesn't matter where the bootstrap partition resides,
because Real Men (tm) will know its number by heart, as well as the
necessary OF voodoo to reset the boot variable. That's a bit different in
my book.
HTH,
Michael
