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xfesty · Apr 20, 2003, 01:52 AM

Hi,

Since 10.2 was released, I've partitioned my G4/Powerbook so I've got a 18gig macos partition, where Mac OS X 10.2 and 9 lives, and a 1gig partition where Debian 3.0 lives.

I dual boot between these with yaboot, which lives on its own partition.

Yesterday on a flight back to Adelaide, my powerbook did something really strange when rebooting (i.e. every time I turned it on, it'd turn off/reboot), then when it suddenly decided to work again, yaboot would no longer boot any of the Mac OS's anymore. I can boot Debian fine, though, but for obvious reasons I can't check the mac OS partition (linux won't mount hfs+).

I've got no idea how I can get OS X/9 bootable again

I've tried booting the 10.2 disk and repairing it, and it'll say everything's fine, but it still won't boot

yaboot.conf has:

macos=/dev/hda13
macosx=/dev/hda13

which is correct (it's always worked, and that's where the mac partition is), and i've also ran ybin/mkofboot just to make sure yaboot's in there right.

I really to boot OS X asap, work due tomorrow, and its on the Mac OS X installation... ack.

I considered reinstalling, archiving the old OS X, but I've only got 237MB free on the hard drive, so I don't think that's going to work very well. I'd only consider this as a last option anyway, reconfiguring/repatching/etc everything I've got installed would be a nightmare - I'm a developer, and there's a HELL of a lot installed.

(Posted this both in OS X & Linux forums, as this is relevant to both).

screamingFit · Apr 20, 2003, 07:53 AM

I am no where near bright enough to fix your booting problem. But, I may have a quick solution for you - use Mac On Linix (MOL). It's fairly simple to get going. Took me about 20 minutes to download, install and configure. It'll boot up your OSX (or OS9) installation in another window and give you, for all intensive purposes, full functionality.

You can find it all at: http://www.maconlinux.org

stew · Apr 20, 2003, 10:51 AM

Just to repost what I wrote in the other forum - try holding the alt/option key at the startup chime. It will give you the built-in boot menu offering you all bootable partitions on your system.

xfesty · Apr 21, 2003, 04:21 AM

Ack...

Tried that, didn't even know about that... but it doesn't see anything *but* Linux as bootable on the HD.

Ack, I have no idea what's going on, I have so much work to get off the powerbook it isn't funny... all overdue as of yesterday

No idea what I can do?

Gene Jockey · Apr 21, 2003, 10:42 AM

Originally posted by xfesty:
Ack...

Tried that, didn't even know about that... but it doesn't see anything *but* Linux as bootable on the HD.

Ack, I have no idea what's going on, I have so much work to get off the powerbook it isn't funny... all overdue as of yesterday

No idea what I can do?

Can you boot it in FireWire disk mode? If you have another Mac (it can be running already), hook the two up via FireWire, and then start the PowerBook with the T key held down. It should mount the PB's drive on the other Mac. Worth a shot to get data off at least...

--Josh

xfesty · Apr 22, 2003, 08:01 AM

Managed to get the problem solved - turned out Mac On Linux *would* boot the OS X partition.

I don't know how - but in either case, I changed the startup disk in System Preferences, and it works fine now.

Wierd.

Cheers to all

screamingFit · Apr 22, 2003, 08:13 PM

Originally posted by xfesty:
Managed to get the problem solved - turned out Mac On Linux *would* boot the OS X partition.

I don't know how - but in either case, I changed the startup disk in System Preferences, and it works fine now.

Wierd.

Cheers to all

Hey hey hey...awesome news!

Who thought I would of ever been able to help someone out on a UNIX forum!