[Drash]

I've got an old 266MHz iMac which has the 8GB open firmware limitation with a 40GB Maxtor 7200rpm drive fitted. I was wanting to install linux and add it to my network.

I've done a successful full install of Yellow Dog Linux 3.0.1, but it wont boot into Linux - hangs in yaboot. Just seen on YDL website that this is because of the open f/w limitation (should have realised as had to partition the HD when i originally fitted it to get it to boot 9.2.2).

I want to be able to boot into Linux or 9.2.2, so my question is: What is a reasonable partition scheme that will allow dual boot and will work with the YDL installer. I've tried (from the top) 1GB macos9, 6GB linux /, 5GB macos data, rest (c 26GB) linux data. If I use the auto partition tool in the YDL installer it puts the 1MB bootstrap in the 4th partition (no good I believe), but I just can't seem to manually edit to put it in the 2nd partition - if I specify sectors it says not allowed, if I specify size it puts it where it wants, not where I want!!

[bluedog]

Yaboot doesn't work on that class of machine. Use the other bootloader that is a control panel for booting.

Use BootX for selecting the boot partition for YellowDog Linux. There should be a version on the installer.

Good Luck!

[Drash]

Thanks for the reply.

The YDL installer says Old World (that needs to use BootX is) is PRE iMac, and yaboot is for New World - iMac and beyond, which cannot use BootX. So ... I'll stick with yaboot for now, but if my latest idea dosen't pan out then that's next on the list.

I've worked out that pdisk is the tool to use - it allows mapping to physical sectors. Auto and disk druid do not. However, selecting pdisk and pressing ok gets you to disk druid, to get pdisk you have to hit return on the disk name - it only took me 3 hours to find this out!!!!!!

Still if i wasn't pratting around with this I'd have to be working

[Drash]

Got it working (using yaboot).!!!

Used 4 partitions (in order from the top) 1GB MacOS9 for system, 6.5GB for YDL for root which included 1MB for bootstrap for yaboot, 36GB for YDL (broken down as 768MB swap, 6GB home, 18.3 GB usr and 1GB tmp) and finally 5GB for MacOS9 apps. The YDL installation defaulted to text rather than GUI (due to inability to load X windows from my CD, it says???), anyhow, I used pdisk to allocate the YDL partitions to physical blocks to ensure the logical partitions were on the right physical partitions, then went back and re-did the mappings with disk druid to get the right mount points, filesystem, swap types etc.

KDE is surprisingly quick, if a bit weird looking compared with X. The TCP/IP networking works straight out of the box (just clicked on a DHCP options somewhere near the end of the install).

Never done anything like that in my life before, but got it all working in under 24 hrs - that's got to be some king of record, and nothing like as bad as I remembered UN*X from my university days when I spent several months trying to port some crappy research software onto HPUX9.0 as they were too tight to upgrade to 10.0!!

[bluedog]

Doh! I really thought the 8MB limit was for only beige class machines. I didn't realize it was also in the 1st rev of the iMacs. Something new to remember.

On a mildly similar note: Rev1 BW G3 Powermacs have a limit of one drive on the main IDE bus and a 20GB size limit for the internal drive. Myself and a friend were busting our brains getting OSX installed with a 120GB drive in this machine and found it in the applecase forums.

Glad you got it working!

Originally posted by Drash:
Thanks for the reply.

The YDL installer says Old World (that needs to use BootX is) is PRE iMac, and yaboot is for New World - iMac and beyond, which cannot use BootX. So ... I'll stick with yaboot for now, but if my latest idea dosen't pan out then that's next on the list.

I've worked out that pdisk is the tool to use - it allows mapping to physical sectors. Auto and disk druid do not. However, selecting pdisk and pressing ok gets you to disk druid, to get pdisk you have to hit return on the disk name - it only took me 3 hours to find this out!!!!!!

Still if i wasn't pratting around with this I'd have to be working