Re: parted and partition types

[Hollis Blanchard]

On Sun, 12 Nov 2000, Andrew Clausen wrote:

> Hollis Blanchard wrote:
>  
> > Setting a partition to type 'Apple_Bootstrap' alone does nothing for the
> > firmware or affect booting. It's the Open Firmware 'boot-device' variable
> > that specifies the boot partition and binary. With a vague boot-device
> > (like the default, hd:,\\:tbxi), OF will search for something to boot,
> > attempting to boot from the first non-driver partition on the disk (be it
> > Apple_HFS, Apple_Bootstrap, or whatever).
> 
> Doesn't MacOS avoid clobbering Apple_Boot*, or something?  I can't
> remember.

It avoids clobbering things it doesn't understand. :) This includes
Apple_Boot*.

> > Oh, and quik is far from popular. :)
> 
> What do old-world ppl use?

BootX. Some slightly dated material is at http://penguinppc.org/usr/bootx/ .

> > Ok, would you add a flag that sets a partition type (in a DOS partition
> > map) to 0x41 so that the firmware will boot from it?
> 
> Is this a hypothetical question?  I don't know what you're talking
> about!

No, in my earlier email I explained how PReP machines boot. The firmware will
*only* boot from a partition of type 0x41 (PPC Boot), onto which you dd a
zImage. parted is unable to create such a partition, which is unfortunate...

-Hollis