Enable multiple OSX boot option and intellegent labels?

[Jim Harris]

From: Jackoverfull [mailto:jackoverfull at gmail.com] 
Sent: Friday, February 03, 2012 9:40 AM
To: Jim Harris
Cc: yaboot-users at lists.ozlabs.org
Subject: Re: Enable multiple OSX boot option and intellegent labels?

 

 

Il giorno 03/feb/2012, alle ore 15.25, Jim Harris ha scritto:





Jack,

 

The current yaboot will do that on its own.  It has no problem booting Linux, OSX,  OS9 and the CD-ROM.  The issue is when you try to boot more than one instance of the *SAME* OS, such as Linux, OSX #1, and OSX #2.  (or OS9 #1 and OS9 #2, or Linux #1 and Linux #2, etc.)

Right. I originally wrote that while i was trying to install Linux on an HFS+ partition while OS 9 was installed on the same partition (worked well, there are a couple of articles on my website. Only in italian, tough…). Anyway, editing that file should let you boot as many different OSes you want.

 

>>Jim

That’s what *I* thought!  And I could give them whatever names I wanted, so long as the menu and the boot-stanzas have the same name. Right?

<<Jim

 

BTW, I tried mounting the boot partition and editing that file by hand as you suggested, (within Ubuntu),  and all it accomplished was de-blessing the boot partition! 

That's odd…Done that several times years ago…

 

>>Jim

I don’t know either

<<Jim

 

 Seriously now, there has to be a better way to do this than mucking around in the boot code. . . .  That’s about as awful a hack as hand-editing the MS-DOS partition table on a PC’s hard drive.  (And yes, I have done that, and yes, it is an awful hack.)  

No doubt about it: it's an "hack" and doesn't cope well with yaboot automations, however I can't see other ways to reach the same result right now.

 

>>Jim

In the current instant, you are correct.  What I would like to do is see if I can actually ‘improve’ the code itself to avoid such an awful hack.

<<Jim

 

Especially as anytime there’s an update to yaboot, your carefully crafted script goes down the toilet, so you have to go and re-hack it again. 

Do backups…

 

>>Jim

Doh!  Still, when I say ‘re-hack’ I also meant that I’d have to go digging around in the boot partition again.

<<Jim

 

(and somehow re-bless that darn partition/file/etc.)  Oh, and another thing.  How did you keep your edit of that file from de-blessing *your* boot partition?

 

Never happened.

However, you can boot a file from Open Firmware even if the partition is not blessed. I believe my mac was set up to boot directly the boot script, regardless of the status of the partition. On one of my machines I didn't even use a dedicated boot partition, had OS X on one and Linux and OS 9 on the other, with the boot script on one of them.

 

>>Jim

Which file do you point the boot at?  The script itself?  I thought the boot had to point to some kind of ‘thx’ (or whatever) file.

<<Jim

 

Again, that has been something like five years ago, my memory may be failing on some details.

 

My current game plan is to get rid of the xbuntu install, (it was too limiting), install a full-up Ubuntu and get that working, download and compile the current version of Yaboot and see if THAT works. . . .  And if I can get all of that done, I plan to do some serious digging into the ybin source code.

Couldn't you just install the ubuntu desktop (and remove the xubuntu one, if you want to), without reinstalling the os? It hould be doable from synaptics (the meta package name you need is "ubuntu-desktop").

 

>>Jim

I could, but I am real suspicious of that kind of thing.  Invariably there is something left out, or something not set the way it should be, and if something goes wrong I will always be second-guessing the installation itself, even if it is perfect.  This way there is no mistake.

 

Thanks for all the tips!  They *ARE* appreciated

 

Jim (JR)

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