OS X, Drives, and Dual Boot

webjprgm

There are two things that I want. 1: to be able to have a partition larger than 6GB for Mac OS X on my original Bondi 233MHZ iMac (I have the _original_ <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" /> ) with a 60 GB harddrive, and 2: to be able to dual (triple) boot into Mac OS X, Mac OS 9, and Linux choosing at startup. There is no startup menu on my model, and I can't get Yaboot to work (from the Linux community).



Interestingly, I got Mac OS X installed on my larger partition when I half damaged my partition table (I changed it using mac-fdisk on Linux but the write had an error), however, the standard Mac OS X installer wouldn't let me install the Developer tools on the boot partition, only on valid Mac OS X install partitions, so I reformatted and did a standard install on a 6GB partition. (I moved my Documents folder to the other partition and made an alias, but it is still a pain to copy files back and forth rather than just move, esp. from the desktop to my documents folder, and my boot partition is getting filled up, w/ the rest of my HD left wide open!)



Any help would be great. Also, any questions about any of the above are fine too, if I can answer them. For now, I manage to exist fine using Mac OS X and loving the Unix power and the dock on the right side of the screen (I hate it on the bottom).

scadboy

Wow, linux, mac os 9, and os X on the same computer? Talk about split personalities.



As far as the "larger than 6GB partition" on your Bondi iMac, it simply isn't going to happen. Though Apple quotes the limit as being 8GB on their knowledgebase site, <a href="http://kbase.info.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/kbase.woa/35/wa/query?searchMode=Expert&type=id&val=KC.106235"; target="_blank">click</a>



Why this is, who knows, some technical issue, probably hardware or software related, who knows, just live with it. So, split up your harddrive into however many partitions you like, but make sure the OS X one is less than 8GB.



As far as booting goes, SUPER Easy! When you boot your mac, before you see the happy mac, not a second after you hear the chime, just hit the Option key and hold it down. In a few seconds, a plain grey screen will appear with two icons. One will have a an turning arrow on it, and the other will have an arrow pointing to the right of the screen. After a few moments, an icon for each partition of your harddrive will appear between the first two icons. When all of the icons have appeared, click one, so that it turns dark grey, and then click the straight arrow. Voilla!



I don't know if it'll work for linux, but I know it'll work for 9 and X.



ciao,



michael

jrego

There are a few things you can do to alleviate the space problem on your OS X partition. You should be able to move everything except the System and Library folders (and, of course, the invisible system files) to a different partition. This requires various degrees of work, depending on what you're moving.



The Applications should just be a drag-and-drop solution. There are instructions elsewhere on the 'net for moving your Users folder (thus solving your problem with the desktop being on the 6GB partion). I've forgotten where, but they shouldn't be that hard to find with Google. Likewise for instructions on moving your virtual memory to a different disk (this seems to be the hardest hack, and requires some mucking about with UNIX, but it's also not really necessary, 6GB should be enough to hold it).



Mac OS 9, if it isn't already, can also greatly benefit from being on a different partition. Each partition gets its own blessed system folder, which is easy for the OS to find. You can have it search for others, but this takes a little bit of time, and can get quite annoying if you switch often. My favorite solution is to have one partition for X, one for 9, and one for data (you'd probably have a Linux one or three, as well).