Re: mac install

[Michael Schmitz <schmitz@simul.biophys.uni-duesseldorf.de>]

> Michael,
>     the reason I asked about the floppies was for this reason... it did not
> take long for me to realize that it was the resource forks (i.e. the
> structure of a mac executable) that was getting messed up in the PC to mac
> transfer. The only way to get around this would be to do the following...
>     1) format a 1.4 floppy on a mac
>     2) cp any executables to it... not in any archive format
>     3) make an image of the floppy... one that could be dd to a floppy on
> linux

Maybe I'm completely boneheaded, but I'll repeat again: there is
absolutely no reason whatsoever to fiddle with floppies in funky formats
in order to preserve resource forks etc. - that's what binhex format files
are for, and that's why all files that need to be unpacked or handled in a
special way on the Mac side are in that format. Most notably
Install.sit.hqx (a StuffIt archive, binhex encoded). 

For the special enjoyment of those who absolutely want to use floppy
images dumped to floppy, or such stuff, there are also:

Debian-m68k-2.1-Mac.img.hqx (a DiskCopy 4.2 image of a HFS floppy with
kernel, ramdisk and booter on it), and 

install-hfs-raw.img (raw dd image of same floppy)

(That's no secret knowledge of mine, quoting the install guide:

   These are the files you need:
     * mac/install.sit.hqx (StuffIt archive of the installation files),
       or
     * mac/Debian-m68k-2.1-Mac.img.hqx (DiskCopy 4.2 image of the 'rescue'
       floppy

...)
 
>     I guess, in the end, what I would need would be the following...
>     1) all files to be in a format which can be safely downloaded (i.e. it's
> contents won't get screwed up) on any machine (Windows, dos, linux, etc)

See above: .hqx format.

>     2) any programs, that I would need to get the above files into a usable
> format on the mac, made into an hfs floppy image (i.e. something I could dd
> on to a floppy in linux)

hfsutils for Linux. Can handle HFS floppies, or raw floppy images directly
(how do you think I created those floppy images, with no working floppy
driver on a Mac, anyway?). If you can't extract the stuff from the .sit
archive, the booter is in source/macinstall.tar.gz along with the
preferences files (in BinHex format. Now that's something that wasn't in 
the install guide indeed, but I consider that a corner case). 

>     All I really need I guess is something like stuffit and a scsi formater
> placed on a hfs floppy and an image made of the floppy.

Now, what in hell would you need _that_ for? Could you explain that? In my
book, 'all files needed to install Linux' are just the aforementioned
ones. Stuffit, diskcopy, HD SC Setup etc. are additional general MacOS
tools that happen to be useful (and part of which we can't distribute for
copyright reasons). As a Mac user, you should already have those. pdisk
for m68k can substitute for HD SC Setup which seems to have disappeared
from Apple's site lately, look at the mklinux.apple.com for pdisk.  

> ftp://ftp.mac.linux-m68k.org/pub/linux-mac68k/mac-utils/mac_7.5_nb_disk.img

That's a MacOS 'network install' floppy. Enough minimal system to boot a
Mac, prepare the disk and continue to install off some AppleShare server.
Not the full MacOS. DiskCopy image, probably.

Now could you explain again what exactly the problem was? No MacOS on a
dead Mac, no tools like StuffIt, nothing but floppies (no networking on
the Mac whatsoever) to transfer the Install.sit.hqx file (did I mention
netatalk for Linux as AppleShare file server solution)? 

	Michael