Gentoo PPC partitions

[johntramp]

Hi. I am installing gentoo on my brother's imac. I have set up the partitions with mac-fdisk but there is no partitions shown in /dev/hdx livecd dev # mac-fdisk -l /dev/hda
/dev/hda
# type name length base ( size ) system
dump: name /dev/hda len 8
/dev/hda1 Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1 ( 31.5k) Partition map
/dev/hda2 Apple_Free Extra 78150680 @ 64 ( 37.3G) Free space
/dev/hda3 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap 1048576 @ 78150744 (512.0M) Linux swap
/dev/hda4 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 ext3 77102168 @ 79199320 ( 36.8G) Linux native

Block size=512, Number of Blocks=156301488
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0

livecd dev # ls hd*
hda hdc
Is this normal or do I need to do something to get them to appear? I have tried rebooting the thing aswell which made no difference.

[timothykaine]

You need to create an 800K bootstrap partition before any of the others, I dont know if this is whats causing this, but as every PPC distro Ive ever seen states it requires it, thats a good place to start.

"mac-fdisk -b" will do this for you

[Loki3]

The partitioing scheme for PPC stuff is quite different than x86. The bootstrap partition as noted is necessary for the bootloader to work. Here (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-ppc.xml?part=1&chap=4)'s the section of the gentoo handbook regarding disk partitioning. I suggest you review it throughly along with the rest of the installation manual.

[johntramp]

yes, I have realised this. My problem tho is that the partitions under hda are not apperaing in /dev, only the harddrive hda itself.

livecd dev # mac-fdisk -l /dev/hda
/dev/hda
# type name length base ( siz
dump: name /dev/hda len 8
/dev/hda1 Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1 ( 31.
/dev/hda2 Apple_Free Extra 78150680 @ 64 ( 37.
/dev/hda3 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap 1048576 @ 78150744 (512.
/dev/hda4 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 ext3 77102168 @ 79199320 ( 36.

Block size=512, Number of Blocks=156301488
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0

livecd dev # mkswap /dev/hda3
/dev/hda3: No such file or directory

[Loki3]

Did you remember to write the partition table before exiting mac-fdisk?

[johntramp]

ok, I fixed what I have done wrong now :)
basically being a lazy @#$% I had decided I knew the install too well for the manual and didnt bother to read the gentoo ppc guide till after I was stuck, so I had booted up and jumped into fdisk and deleted the partitions etc. and written that to disk. Then I found that there was a mac-fdisk and started playing with that. (ps mac-fdisk is much worse than fdisk imho) The changes from mac-fdisk were not being written to disk properly or something, so I had to run dd /dev/zero /dev/hda to get rid of anything which I had done, and then when I booted up again and used mac-fdisk it was all grevy.

Thanks :)
-John