Re: Yaboot vs BootX

[Ethan Benson <erbenson@alaska.net>]

On Fri, Feb 18, 2000 at 04:32:06PM +0000, FASSINO Jean-Philippe wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> just a question about yaboot.
> I'm using BootX to boot linux on my powerbook G3 and powermac G4.
> 
> Does bootX will be maintained any more ?

I am not the maintainer Ben is but I can say that using yaboot on
`newworld' (colored) macs is the prefered way to go, especially on
G4's. 

> Does yaboot or bootX is better ?

yaboot only works on newworld macs (any mac that uses a MacOSROM file
in the system folder instead of a hardware ROM) for this hardware
yaboot does indeed work better then BootX.  for old machines if you
have the space to waste on macos Bootx is probably still the best way
to go, quik is.. hum kinda bogus right now, and miboot is tricky to
install.  

> My disk is partionning with 4 partitions (1: HFS, 2: sap, 3: ext2
> system, 4: ext2 data)
>
> Does i can install yaboot without reinstall linux just by kill HFS
> partition,
> cut it in two other partition and install yaboot in one and macos in
> second ?

yes that sounds like a good plan, using yaboot on a macos partition is
actually more complicated (you have to muck with OF variables, and
most people would rather stick a fork in their eye) 

what you should do is backup your macos stuff delete the macos
partition and create a 800K partition as the first partition on the
disk, then recreate your macos partition with the remaining space, i
think its `usually' safe to change partitions this way without ruining
the linux ones...  you do need to create the yaboot partition as a
special type: Apple_Bootstrap, Hard disk toolkit (macos) will do this
as will mac-fdisk under linux.  once you have that partition look at
my ybin utility to set it up, it will take care of formatting it and
installing yaboot in such a way that your machine will automatically
boot it (or a optional boot menu i included courtesy of Ben) when your
machine powers up you should not have to do anything but leave OF in
its default settings (command option  p r at bootup).

-- 
Ethan Benson