Re: The broken fdisk
> > It shouldn't do that, obviously. What Mac model was this on? Kernel
> > version? I've had reports of mac-fdisk crashing the machine on writing
> > the
> > partition table, I just haven't been able to reproduce them.
>
> The kernel from
> http://http.us.debian.org/debian/dists/woody/main/disks-
> powerpc/current/powermac/
It should show some sort of version number on boot ... that's what I
meant. Linux version 2.2.19-pmac is what I grep from the binary. I'd
suggest you use a more recent kernel version
> The computer is an iBook dual usb, (500/66).
The other report was from an iBook as well IIRC. If someone would loan me
such a beast I could investigate a bit. With my Lombard and any recent 2.4
kernel I cannot reproduce any partition table write problems. Booting a
2.2.19 kernel honestly never occurred to me :-)
> >> The hard drive seemed repartitioned, I checked with a Mac OS 9 boot
> >
> > Why did you have to repeat the partitioning step?
>
> I tried to use the method from
> http://people.debian.org/~branden/ibook.html (the one for debian
> single-boot).
> After the computer crashed/rebooted, it couldn't boot normally since the
> disks were reformatted. I had to reinstall Mac OS in order to get to a
> state where I could put the linux kernel on the disk (so I could get to
> debbootstrap). To reinstall Mac OS, I had to reformat the disks with
> HFS. My poor disks... all this wear and tear must be bad.
There should be a way to reinstall MacOS while retaining the partition
layout (nobody could ever install MacOS and Linux together on a single
disk). There weren't any disks reformatted, just the partition table had
been altered. I'd first (re)partition using some MacOS tool, leaving the
HFS partition first after all those driver partitions. If you can, place a
very small partition first, even before the MacOS partition, to serve as
bootstrap partition later. The space you intend to use for Linux just
leave unallocated, or create a second HFS partition. Install MacOS to the
first HFS partition from CD (I've done that with an older MacOS version so
I assume it still can be done). Unless mac-fdisk does real bad things to
the disk now, the driver partitions as well as your MacOS boot partitions
should always remain valid, and you can start the installer a second time
after the crash.
Once the Debian side is up and running you can always trash the MacOS
partition and turn that into a Linux partition. It's a bit of a workaround
but I don't see another way if a 2.4 kernel doesn't help.
Michael
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