[AAPl Shareholder]

Can OS X server be installed on a HFS or HFS+ drive?

If so... is it possible to place os x server on one partition with 8.x on another. (because, after all... blue box kind'a sucks)

No. MacOS X Server runs on UFS. HFS(+) support in MacOS X Server is to support Apple FileServices and NetBooting.

And you can partition your hard drive if you'd like, but you can only format a single partition for UFS per physical drive.

You should check out the Apple TIL articles on how they think you should set up your hard drive and the like, but you won't be installing MacOS X Server on an HFS volume.

[jreades]

As Mark said, lots of info can be found in the Apple TIL section. And again, as Mark said, the OSX install will reformat your drive/partition to the UFS scheme after which it will be unreadable by your OS8.x system.

Personally, unless you have a new G3 with an 8GB or bigger HD, I'd recommend purchasing a second HD (internal or external, your choice) so that you can re-partition either system's HD without losing everything on the other system as well.

Additionally, there are two approaches you can take to running 8.x on your OSX/8.x system (one from within OSX, one without):
<ul>[*] After running the blue box for the first time (it will create an 8.5 disk image in your OSX home directory), use the Startup Disk control panel to select your original 8.5 or higher HD/partition. Now, your blue box will start up 8.5 with all your preferences and so on intact, although you will continue to have the basic blue box problems (fixing your cache setting is one of the first things to do).[*] The OSX server disk comes with a utility called "System Disk" (also downloadable from Apple). Drop the extension into your 8.x extensions folder and, by holding down the option key while booting, you can access a startup menu from which you can boot into either OSX or OS8.x. I have heard some rumours that if you make your primary HD the OSX drive you _might_ have problems getting at your old 8.x partition this way (as it might not look for other drives before booting) -- this may, however, be related to things like third party SCSI cards though, so it's just a 'be careful' thing. [/list]

once i installed Mac OS X server on my computer it was always booting the server at startup and i had trouble getting back to my old system. using a Mac OS 8.5.1 CD work to start up and then select another startupdisk works but is long procedure. the fastest way is to hold down the option while OS X server is booting. after 3 secs it will automaticly reboot and look for another system. there is only one problem, i have 8 partions on 2 hard disks and 3 different systems(german OS 8.5.1 english OS 8.5.1 and english OS 8.6b9) and it always boots the same one.