[solved] transferring OSX

Question

Hello everybody ...
after getting archlinuxppc running on my ibook G3 clamshell I'm trying to get a dualboot system with the old OSX from a seperate harddisk. As changing the harddisk is not done within a few minutes I had to make a backup from an intel-based notebook.
Basic configuration:
ibook g3 300 MHz with 40 GB harddisk. Currently only archlinuxppc is installed. The partition map looks like this:
# type name length base ( size ) system
/dev/hda1 Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1 ( 31.5k) Partition Map
/dev/hda2 Apple_Bootstrap bootstrap 1600 @ 64 (800.0k) NewWorld Bootblock
/dev/hda3 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 root 12582912 @ 1664 ( 6.0G) Linux native
/dev/hda4 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 opt 12582912 @ 12584576 ( 6.0G) Linux native
/dev/hda5 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 usr 10485760 @ 25167488 ( 5.0G) Linux native
/dev/hda6 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 var 10485760 @ 35653248 ( 5.0G) Linux native
/dev/hda7 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 home 23068672 @ 46139008 ( 11.0G) Linux native
/dev/hda8 Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap 8388608 @ 69207680 ( 4.0G) Linux native
/dev/hda9 Apple_Free Extra 543872 @ 77596288 (265.6M) Free Space
I know, swap is too much ... it's just a temporary size.
I was not able to view the partition table from the old 3GB Mac harddisk. (I was too fast to change the 3 GB hd against the current 40 GB hd. So I plugged the old harddisk into an intel based notebook and started with knoppix. Knoppix was not able to view the partition table with the help of cfdisk, but (I don't know where knoppix got its information) it creates the nodes /mnt/hda1 to /mnt/hda8 so it seems as if knoppix knew that there are partitions like that. I made images from these partitions with the help of dd and got the following sizes:
hda1 32256 Bytes
hda2 27648 Bytes
hda3 37888 Bytes
hda4 27648 Bytes
hda5 37888 Bytes
hda6 262144 Bytes
hda7 262144 Bytes
hda8 3252775936 Bytes
I found this partition table within penguinppc.org
# type name length base ( size ) system
/dev/sdb1 Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1 ( 31.5k) Partition map
/dev/sdb2 Apple_Driver43 Macintosh 54 @ 64 ( 27.0k) Driver 4.3
/dev/sdb3 Apple_Driver43 Macintosh 74 @ 118 ( 37.0k) Driver 4.3
/dev/sdb4 Apple_Driver_IOKit Macintosh 512 @ 192 (256.0k) Unknown
/dev/sdb5 Apple_Patches Patch Partition 512 @ 704 (256.0k) Unknown
/dev/sdb6 Apple_HFS untitled 194557 @ 1216 ( 95.0M) HFS
/dev/sdb7 Apple_HFS untitled 2 333025 @ 195773 (162.6M) HFS
/dev/sdb8 Apple_Free Extra 10 @ 528798 ( 5.0k) Free space
So I think my "little" partition inamges from hda2 to hda8 are the same like these. How am I able to copy the original OSX installation into my system.
My first thoughts:
adding an Apple_HFS partition with the size of the image from hda8 and copy back the image with dd. Now there are 2 questions.
first one
do I need the other partitions too? if so how do I know how to name them and in what order do I have to take them?
second one
does it matter if the osx image is on hda8 or not?
additional question
I recognized that during the partitioning process I got never asked for "primary" oder "advanced" partition. How many partitions am I able to create?
additional question 2
what are these mac-partitions for?
regards
Martin Schuchardt
Last edited by kruemeltee (2009-02-26 05:55:36)

Answer 1

okay ... after asking within IRC someone told me just the big partition is neccessary for running MacOSX. So I deleted the swap partition, created a Apple_HFS Partition end the rest as swap partition again. I recovered MacOSX with the help of dd and added the line "macosx=/dev/hda8" into yaboot.conf.
After rebooting MacOSX started without any questions and works fine. For getting into the dual boot menu I forgot to run the command
mkofboot -v -C /etc/yaboot.conf
within archlinux. So I restarted with the help of the boot cd, changed into my root partition and executed the command. Now I have successfully installed a dual-boot menu for choosing between linux and macosx!
Great work.
regards
Martin Schuchardt