Installing OS X on a "Wallstreet"...

[CalSD]

Have a “Wallstreet” PowerBook with 320 Mb of RAM. I got OS X when it came out in March. With OS 10.1 and 9.2 I was forced to get a new hard drive. I purchased a Fujitsu 20 gig and transferred my files to an iMac that had enough space. I wanted to put “classic” on a 2.5 gig partition with OS X on a 17.5 gig partition. I went to install OS 10.0 on the 17.5 gig partition and went through the installation process with no problems. Then... I came to the point where it asked me which partition I wanted to install OS X on, but both partitions were “dim” and the installer would not let me proceed!! I had to create three 6.8 gig partitions as, apparently, because I do not have a USB port, it will not recognize a drive greater than 8 gigs!! What gives? Is there a “trick” to getting OS X to install on a partition greater than 8 gigs? Thanks in advance!!

 

[kenny]

This is a well known issue with the older G3's. Short answer is that there is currently no happy solution; you must install MacOSX within the first 8 gigs of the drive, and that the first partition must also be within the first 8 gigs of the drive. Only installer seems to be affected (so you will see the issue crop up when installing other applications), but the rest of the drive can be in a second partition and accessed normally within MacOSX.

It sucks, yes, but there it is...

 

[CalSD]

Can I create a 2.5 gig partition as the first one and the 17.5 gig as the second then copy the installed OS X files over to the second partition? Thanks again!

 

[kenny]

Originally posted by CalSD
Can I create a 2.5 gig partition as the first one and the 17.5 gig as the second then copy the installed OS X files over to the second partition? Thanks again!

Probably not a good idea. Just thinking about it for a few seconds, you'd have to take into account:

- OpenFirmware - would need to be updated with the new location. Apple has stated that if you mess with OF, you're on your own and unsupported. I have doubts about whether that would work on the older G3 boxen anyway, based on my dismal experience trying to get my Beige tower to boot straight into Linux using YABOOT. I know, different system, but essentially the same problem.

- FSTAB (or VFSTAB, or whatever X is using) would have to be updated with the new location. Assuming that you could overcome the OF issues, the system would need to know where the drive that contains the root filesystem lives.

- You'd have to be either very careful or very lucky (both, actually) to not mess up file ownership, symlinks, forked files, etc. when transferring everything to the other partition. This alone is pretty daunting.

- I've only ever seen mention of this problem in connection with the installer, but there may be things in the bowels of X that have the same dependencies that we don't know about.

Might be interesting to try it, in the name of science, but I'd always be nervous about the problem rearing it's ugly head at some time in the future. Sorry...