Installing Debian using debian-sarge-netinst.iso (powerpc)

[sebyte <sebyte@smolny.plus.com>]

Hi all.

First of all, apologies if this is not the correct mailing list for a newbie-ish question.  (I have done some reading! ).   As debian-sarge-netinst.iso is under development and I am trying to use it to install Debian on a PowerPC, (Apple G4), I thought debian-powerpc and debian-boot were probably the best places to ask. 

First of all, I'm trying to create a dual-boot system.  MacOSX in already installed and I have downloaded the 'debian-sarge-netinst.iso' disk image and burned it to CD.   I doubt very much there is a problem with the CD.  It is my understanding of the precise partitioning and mount configuration needed, (in fact,  the whole process! ), which is lacking I'm afraid.

I have partitioned my hard drive, (using Apple's Disk Utility), as follows:

Partition    Volume name    FS type    Size      Mount point / intended use

3             DebRoot             HFS+       2 GB     /  (boot partition, i.e., /bin, /sbin, /dev, /etc and /lib)
5             DebSwap           HFS+       1 GB     /swap
7             DebRest             HFS+       9 GB     the rest ( /boot, /tmp, /var, /usr, /home, e.t.c )
9             DebOSX             UFS         11 GB   Debian/OSX file exchange volume
11           MacOSX             HFS+      12 GB   MacOSX volume

The logic behind this partitioning scheme is to give 12 GB to Debian, 12 GB to MacOSX and the remainder to be a shared file exchange volume.

So, booting up from the CD, everything works fine, (language selection, hardware detection, DHCP configuration, e.t.c.), and I am duly presented with the above partition map and invited to create the filesystems, (I selected 'ext2' for partition 3 and 7, and 'swap' for partition 5), and configure my mount points, (I selected '/' for partition 3, '/swap' for partition 5 and left partition 7 unmounted as there doesn't seem to be a way of choosing more than one directory per partition).  The installation then proceeds fine, (packages are read from disk and installed), until finally I am presented with the following message:

"No bootstrap partition found.  There must be an 800K Apple_Bootstrap partition named 'bootstrap' of type 'Apple_Bootstrap' before you can continue", or words to that effect.

Is this message not referring to partition 1, (which shows up on the partition map but isn't called 'bootstrap')?  I really don't want to repartition my hard disk, (and reinstall MacOSX), again!  

Any help much much much appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

sebyte

P.S. Are there any good reasons for choosing ext2 filesystems over ext3, or vice versa?