Re: Reference to Apple_bootstrap partition (was: Installation Open-firmware error)

[risto.suominen@gmail.com]

2008/5/14, Bryan Pierce <bdpierce1@bdpierce.com>:
>
>    *   Partition the drive with 2 partitions
>                 (1) a HFS+ partation - as a placeholde which is deleted
> to make space for the Linux partitions
>                 (2) an HFS+ partition - which then has OS 9 installed
>
In Apple partitioning, part. 1 is the partition table, part. 2 would
be the first user partition, or, if OS 9 drivers are installed, some
later partition.

>    *   Using pdisk (a.k.a. mac-fdisk) to delete the first partition and
> install an "Apple_bootstrap" partition

I managed to boot from a USB stick with only Apple_HFS partition.
Yaboot gives a warning, suggesting Apple_Bootstrap, but it seems to be
no strict requirement. (mac-fdisk usually [command c] creates an 800k
Apple_Bootstrap partition, which is too small for the kernel.) So if
you keep the Apple_HFS, you should be able to reach the partition from
within OS X.

> And so the first half of of this line works fine. I actually don't
> understand the "/dev//|sda2|/" half of the line...and I'm
>  thinking that if I could get someone to explain that, my problems would
> be almost solved.
>
My guess is that the pipes are only to distinguish the part that may
need editing, depending on the partition number used. The double slash
has no meaning at all. Probably a typo.

>    *   At any rate, the problem is figuring out how to move the files to
> this Apple_bootstrap partition, when it doesn't show up in the finder,
> and I can't seem to get a reference to it from the Unix Terminal
>
If the boot.img contains the file system (I think it does), you don't
need to access the partition at file level. But your partition should
be of correct size. Then you can just point to the partition with
something like /dev/disk1s2. You should be able to recognize the right
partition with mac-fdisk (pdisk).

Risto