David A. Gatwood <marsmail@globegate.utm.edu> wrote:

>So how exactly do they get away with distributing the Mach Kernel,
>precompiled, with that in there?  It can definitely read from HFS
>partitions, since the pre-DR3 installer boots off of an HFS partition
>(i.e. the mach_servers, bootstrap.conf... stuff that'd normally be on
>the MkLinux partition is on an HFS partition for the installer).

>From the "How to Install MkLinux" DR2.1 Release:

MkLinux Installation

Once the drive is partitioned, things gets much easier. Double-click on 
the Install MkLinux application, then answer the various questions it 
presents.  To ensure that the installation process runs smoothly, we 
recommend that you quit all other applications while installing MkLinux.

The installer will create appropriate file systems, then load them from 
the MkLinux distribution. It will also install a few files in your MacOS 
system folder, including:

=80 the MkLinux Control Panel to control booting of MacOS/MkLinux

=80 the MkLinux Booter extension which is used to switch boot the Macintosh=
 
into MkLinux

=80 the Mach Kernel file which takes over the booting process for bringing 
up MkLinux


Although I haven't tried it, this sure sounds like the same process we 
use with the Installer. Their description of how to partition the disk is 
also very much like NetBSD, although the "pdisk" utility assumes some 
details about disk partitions that are not always present if the user 
didn't start with Apple's disk setup.  However "pdisk" does give the user 
the option of re-writing the Partition Map with the warning that the disk 
will not be usable with MacOS after doing so.

-bob