On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 10:00 PM, <annathemerm...@hush.com> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Hello! > > So, I was trying to install Debian on this old iBook, and > apparently yaboot wants an Apple Bootstrap partition of a > particular size. I don't see a way to create such a thing in the > partitioner, and I would think it is something Mac OS X ought to > have created?
No, the Apple Bootstrap partition has nothing to do with Apple or the Mac OS. I think I've finally got this thing figured out, so I'll try explaining it. (I haven't done debian on my iBook yet, my G4 is borken (stupid cold solder problem on a chip that I understand is supposed to the graphics controller) and my clamshell has been claimed by my son. :-/ Part of the reason I'm playing with Debian is precisely that Fedora dropped the PPC from F13 to F15. Bad luck is good luck. 8-) Apple used to use what it called "blessed folders" to boot. (Don't know if they still do, I bailed when I learned the switch to intel was a one-way trip.) Nothing really special, the "blessing" was a way to let the boot selector application figure out where system stuff was when you multi-boot different versions of the Mac OS. The Boot selector would tell the actual bootstrap code where to find the appropriate bootstrap, and it had its own 8G limits back before the iBook days. I blogged about installing Fedora on the old clamshell iBook, not sure if it will be more informative or more confusing to look at: <http://reiisi.blogspot.com/2009/05/fedora-on-old-clamshell-ibook.html> Short version is that the bootstrap code on Macintosh style partitioning was expected to be in an HFS volume. So you need an HFS partition to hold yaboot's bootstrap code. openBSD just lets you use any old HFS partition, including one being used to boot either the now-ancient classic system or the older PPC Mac OS X system. (Things have changed a bit for the intel Macs.) But they warn you about the 8G limits in early "new world" machines and expect you to deal with that yourself, and they also expect you to be able to type commands in at the openfirmware prompt. (I like openBSD, even if I tend to work in the more dressed-out Linux environments.) yaboot avoids direct interaction with the openfirmware prompt by making its own tiny bootstrap volume. That's the so-called applebootstrap partition/volume. It's separate to make sure it's small and can fit under the 8G limit, I think. That means that if you want to use LVM, you'll need at least three basic (Macintosh volume) partitions: (1) the tiny one to pass control from the Apple boostrap code ("ROM" that isn't) to the Linux kernel, (2) then usual root partition, and (3) the LVM partition to split up into Linux partitions for the rest. Dual booting does work, but you really have to practice a couple of times before you get it right for you. Don't expect to avoid backing up anything you would rather not lose, you're going to wipe that disk completely at least once. > Unfortunately, the Mac OS X partitioner really isn't > that powerful. Well, yes and no. But I tended to use both the classic HD Utility and the Mac OS X HD Utility on machines that boot classic. That helped with making sure I had a readable classic partition (for triple boot). There is also a pdisk utility that you can use in the Mac OS side of things, that might help, in addition to the mac-fdisk mentioned by Roger Leigh. I'm not sure which is newer and more supported. You might be able to try tricks like allocating one partition for the Linux stuff with the Mac OS partitioning utility, then using the installer's partitioner (gparted?) to remove it and add the three Linux partitions. The Fedora installer was able to make the small partition on my iBooks, except, not on my clamshell if the drive was larger than 120G. HTH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/banlktin0lm_tktq8bsma5pafyqzk3o_...@mail.gmail.com
