Re: install help - overwrote Apple partition map (I think)

[Michael <macallan%netbsd.org@localhost>]

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Hello,

On Dec 31, 2009, at 9:10 PM, Glen Henshaw wrote:

> I fear that I have screwed up. I am trying to install netbsd on a G3
> iBook with Open Firmware 3. Unfortunately, I didn't see the part of
> the INSTALL that said to partition and create the file system manually
> instead of letting the installer do it on Open Firmware 3 systems, and
> went ahead and created a standard three partition scheme. As a
> consequence I'm afraid I overwrote the Apple partition map, and now I
> cannot boot the machine from its hard drive.
>
> The install instructions have no information about restoring an Apple
> partition map. Can I recover?

Sort of. Do you have another harddisk with OSX installed? If so, you  
can just load ofwboot.xcf from that partition and have it load the  
kernel from the disk you just installed NetBSD on. I'm doing something  
similar on my G4 - I have one disk with OSX and one disk with NetBSD,  
ofwboot.xcf is in the OSX partition, the boot command looks like this:
boot hd:ofwboot.xcf ultra1:10/netbsd

hd is an alias for the first partition OpenFirmware can read, the 2nd  
parameter points at the NetBSD partition and the kernel ( ultra1 is  
the alias for the 2nd disk in this box, 10 is the partition number  
which will likely be different in your case, you may be able to leave  
it out entirely, then ofwboot.xcf should pick the first partition it  
understands )

You can also load ofwboot.xcf from a CD and have it load the kernel  
from somewhere else.

good luck
Michael

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