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hart · Mar 9, 2004, 05:29 PM

before I get all interested in doing this I want to make sure it's even possible. Looks like No One Lives Forever 2 is maybe never going to work in Panther. So I've had Panther disks sitting unused while I played through the game.

But let's just say I want to upgrade my OS but retain the ability to play this game in the future. I have three internal drives, two of which are partitioned with lots of room sitting around. Is it possible, what happens if, any tips/cautions for upgrading my main OS to Panther/10.3 and putting a copy of Jaguar/10.2 on another disk just for playing this game?

Of course, this seems like a pain in the neck just to play one game...

mikemako · Mar 9, 2004, 06:34 PM

there would be no problem with that. I used to have 10.2 on one partitian and 10.3 on another. Similar to your case, there was software I needed that only ran on Jaguar, so I'd just change startup disk whenever I needed to use it.

Mike

Moonray · Mar 9, 2004, 06:53 PM

You can do that without any problems, just the Apple software does not run always well with a different version.

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Krusty · Mar 9, 2004, 06:56 PM

As mikemako said, it should work fine. I've noticed a rare bug that you should keep an eye out for. Occasionally, I would have a dock application on one partition mysteriously start pointing to the analogous app on the other partition (eg. I once updated iChat on one partition and when I went back to the other partition, my dock icon on that partition launched the updated one on the other partition ... NOT the one on its own partition that it had originally pointed to). Weird.

hart · Mar 10, 2004, 05:55 AM

When I'm through with this arrangement what will I have to do to eliminate the extra OS? Will it be possible to do without erasing everything on the drive, including other partitions?

CatOne · Mar 10, 2004, 10:02 AM

Originally posted by hart:
When I'm through with this arrangement what will I have to do to eliminate the extra OS? Will it be possible to do without erasing everything on the drive, including other partitions?

For the love of all that is holy, put the OS's on separate partitions (or drives). Then, format the second partition when you're done. Your data shouldn't be on the same partition as the OS version you want to blow away.

Moonray · Mar 10, 2004, 02:39 PM

Originally posted by hart:
When I'm through with this arrangement what will I have to do to eliminate the extra OS? Will it be possible to do without erasing everything on the drive, including other partitions?

You simply trash the folders. There are some invisible ones though and you'll need adequate permissions of course. If you can boot OS 9 it's an easy job from there.

Use Carbon Copy Cloner or the procedure described on the same website to copy your existing 10.2 to another drive/partition, then update one of them to 10.3 and boot when necessary the other.

Since you have already more than one partition/drive there is no reason to format any drive, not for copying, not for updating, and not for deleting any of your opersting systems.

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Rickster · Mar 10, 2004, 04:21 PM

Looks like No One Lives Forever 2 is maybe never going to work in Panther.

Actually, it's a QuickTime problem, not a Panther problem. You'll see the same issue if you upgrade to QuickTime 6.4 (or 6.5, was it?) in Jaguar. Apple expects to post a QuickTime update fixing this issue soon.

As for partitioning and such...

I regularly use multiple OS partitions and a shared user-data partition, so that I don't have a separate home folder and preferences for each OS version. This is accomplished by creating a UNIX symbolic link from /Users to a copy of it on the extra partition. (Search macosxhints.com for tips on how to do this.)

When I'm through with this arrangement what will I have to do to eliminate the extra OS? Will it be possible to do without erasing everything on the drive, including other partitions?

In Disk Utility, you can select a single partition and Erase it without affecting other partitions on the drive.

Rainy Day · Mar 11, 2004, 02:56 PM

Originally posted by Rickster:
I regularly use multiple OS partitions and a shared user-data partition, so that I don't have a separate home folder and preferences for each OS version. This is accomplished by creating a UNIX symbolic link from /Users to a copy of it on the extra partition. (Search macosxhints.com for tips on how to do this.)

As of Jaguar, MacOS X supports the /etc/fstab file, so this could also be done by mounting the partition where your home directory resides. This can eliminate some symbolic link related issues (mostly with the CLI), and allow for some interesting possibilities with translucent (union) mounting. It also keeps the partition from mounting on the desktop (although there are other ways to achieve this as well).

Is one better than the other? Whatever works. Each approach has it's own advantages and disadvantages. YMMV.

Example of an /etc/fstab file to overlay the HFS volume "User Vol" on the /Users directory:

Code:
# device                mount point             filesystem      fs options      dump    fsck
LABEL=User\040Vol       /Users                  hfs             rw              1       2

See man fstab for more info. Btw, the directory /Users must actually exist for this to work; i don't think you can mount a volume on top of a symbolic link to a directory (but i might be wrong about this).