Re: INSTALL.macppc -snapshot questions

[Joel Rees <joel_rees_(_at_)_sannet_(_dot_)_ne_(_dot_)_jp>]

On 2005.4.24, at 05:01 AM, Brian wrote:

> I am reading through the installation manual, and some pieces of the
> manual don't make sense to me.
>
> Here are my assumptions:
>
> 1) pdisk is used to partition HFS partitions
> 2) fdisk is used to partition bsd partitions

I usually describe fdisk as being used to cut DOS (or BIOS level?) 
partitions. Maybe that's since I picked up freebsd.

Is fdisk used at all with Macintosh hardware?

> 3) disklabel is used to create slices

Which would be openbsd's partitions?

> If I am using the mac to only run openBSD, I do not need to mess with
> pdisk, right?

Has this changed recently?

Mac hardware has traditionally needed to have at least one HFS or HFS+ 
partition for openfirmware (and in ancient history, the ROMmed 
low-level routines) to find the initial boot stuff in.

>  I would do the install the same way as on an i386

Well, same. but different, right? :-/

>  with
> the exception of making the following changes to the firmwear:
>
> setenv auto-boot? true
> setenv boot-device hd:,ofwboot
>
> [to save the results into NVRAM]
> reset-all
>
> (per ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/macppc/INSTALL.macppc)
>
> If I want to share the drive with OS X, then I would need to use pdisk
> to partition a part of the drive for openBSD?

Or you could use the native Mac partitioning utility to set the 
Mac-side stuff up.

>  This would probably call
> for doing a fresh install of OS X with only a part of the drive
> partitioned, right?

Yeah. Great opportunity to cut swap and dedicated web (UFS) partitions 
and such for the Mac side if you want them. (Swap is still a little 
tricky on the Mac, but I've actually found I was more successful with 
it than I thought on some of my stuff.)

> Now, in the documentation, I am getting confused here:
>
> "Next the disk label which defines the layout of the OpenBSD
> file systems must be set up.  The installation script will
> invoke an interactive editor allowing you to do this.  Note
> that partition 'c' inside this disk label should ALWAYS
> reflect the entire disk, including any non-OpenBSD portions.
> If you are labeling a new disk, you will probably start
> out with an 'a' partition that spans the disk.  In this
> case you should delete 'a' before adding new partitions.
> The root file system should be in partition 'a', and swap
> is usually in partition 'b'. If you have DOS or Linux
> partitions defined on the disk, these will usually show up as
> partition 'h', 'i' and so on."
>
> Shouldn't all the references to partition 'letter' say slice instead?

I don't know. It seems like it doesn't matter what terminology you use, 
it's just confusing until you get used to it.

It helps me to think of the tools I cut each kind of partition with as 
a reference for the partition type. This is particularly valid because 
the actual records of the partitioning are kept separately for each OS.

> Anyway, thanks for helping with this transition.  I really need a new
> box to do some of the things I have been putting on hold.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Brian