Arch Linux

POWERFUL

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Registered: 2010-03-05

Posts: 3

ArchPPC bootstrap partition [SOLVED]

I've decided to install ArchLinux on my G4, but I don't wanna destroy my mac installation. I've set up the "normal" partitions (root, swap, etc) but it seems that I need to have a special bootstrap partition on position #2. The problem is that that position is taken by mac already with its "Apple_Driver_ATA" partition. Parted can't resize it, so the only option would be to remove that partition. Is that safe, or is this weird partition actually needed?

Last edited by POWERFUL (2010-03-06 13:11:20)

Gen2ly

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From: Sevierville, TN

Registered: 2009-03-06

Posts: 1,529

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Re: ArchPPC bootstrap partition [SOLVED]

No there should be a special bootstrap partition if I remember correctly.  The bootstrap partition is essentially called by Open Firmware where it loads the bootloader (this may not be entirely right, please be patient with me as I haven't install Arch onto anything older than a Mac OS 9 system) - this could be the Mac OS # bootloader or the Linux/Mac bootloader can be told to be used (yaboot).   If you could, could you show us the output of:

mac-fdisk -l

after you have started the Arch Install CD.

Last edited by Gen2ly (2010-03-06 00:25:47)

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POWERFUL

Member

Registered: 2010-03-05

Posts: 3

Re: ArchPPC bootstrap partition [SOLVED]

Sure, here it is:

/dev/hda
        #                    type name                  length   base      ( size )  system
/dev/hda1     Apple_partition_map Apple                     63 @ 1         ( 31.5k)  Partition map
/dev/hda2        Apple_Driver_ATA Macintosh                 64 @ 64        ( 32.0k)  Unknown
/dev/hda3        Apple_Driver_ATA Macintosh                 64 @ 128       ( 32.0k)  Unknown
/dev/hda4           Apple_Patches Patch Partition          512 @ 192       (256.0k)  Unknown
/dev/hda5               Apple_HFS MacOS              117186797 @ 704       ( 55.9G)  HFS
/dev/hda6         Apple_UNIX_SVR2 Linux               35155968 @ 117188608 ( 16.8G)  Linux native
/dev/hda7         Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap                 3956736 @ 152344576 (  1.9G)  Linux swap
/dev/hda8              Apple_Free Extra                   1107 @ 117187501 (553.5k)  Free space
/dev/hda9              Apple_Free Extra                    176 @ 156301312 ( 88.0k)  Free space

Block size=512, Number of Blocks=156301488
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0
Drivers-
1: @ 64 for 21, type=0x701
2: @ 128 for 34, type=0xf8ff

/dev/hdb
        #                    type name                length   base    ( size )  system
/dev/hdb1     Apple_partition_map Apple                    2 @ 1       (  1.0k)  Partition map
/dev/hdb2               Apple_HFS ArchPPC             357816 @ 16      (174.7M)  HFS

Block size=512, Number of Blocks=357832
DeviceType=0x1, DeviceId=0x1

It should be a partition whose type is "bootstrap" or something, I think.

POWERFUL

Member

Registered: 2010-03-05

Posts: 3

Re: ArchPPC bootstrap partition [SOLVED]

Apparently I was right, I did need to create a new bootstrap partition on position #2. The thing is that it's the logical position, not the physical! So I just created the bootstrap partition after the swap and reordered it with mac-fdisk.

Thanks for your time, though.

Gen2ly

Member

From: Sevierville, TN

Registered: 2009-03-06

Posts: 1,529

Website

Re: ArchPPC bootstrap partition [SOLVED]

Glad you got it figured  out, Powerful.

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Setting Up a Scripting Environment | Proud donor to wikipedia - link