partioning power pc and OSX/ubuntu dualboot

[Eric Dunbar]

To add my 2 cents to the very interesting discussion (& probably
duplicating some/most of it):

On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 11:35:28 +0100, altern <enrike at altern.org> wrote:
> I am reading the "Installation How To - PowerPC" in the Support section
> of ubuntu website. in "Partition your disk" it says :
> 
> "If you do not want to erase an entire disk, or if you want to customize
> the partition layout, choose "Manually edit partition table" from the menu"
> 
> what does this exactly mean? will then erase my osx partition and i will
> loose my data?

Not unless you tell it to!

> Or will this create new partitions on the empty space taken from my osx
> partition, (similar to the way SuSE linux does when you intall in over
> winXP), without erasing the osx instalation?.

Do you have two partitions on your computer already? If yes, then
"destroy" the first one (provided it's not your OS X one) and use
Ubutu's installer (manually partition) to set up the resulting free
space. I found that the (manual partitioning tool in) Ubunutu
installer did an excellent job of automagically assigning partition
sizes and mount points. YMMV.

If you have only one partition on your computer, I would strongly
recommend against resizing but go for a full floormat and re-install.
Depending on your future plans, you could create two or three or even
more partitions: the first major one for Ubuntu (4+ GB); the second
for something like OS 9 or a "safe" OS X to OS 9 swap partition (HFS+)
(0.5+ GB); the third for OS X (3+ GB). Of course, bigger is better but
not too big if your drive isn't that big. You could always make the
2nd partition at least 4 GB and this will give you a partition that
you can "destroy" later on and install another OS onto (future version
of Ubuntu, YellowDogLinux 4.0, etc.).

And, if you really want, MacOnLinux is apparently working under Ubuntu
so you'll be able to run Mac OS X or Mac OS 9 in a manner similar to
running OS 9 as "Classic" under OS X.

> if the later is the case, how reliable would this be? i mean paritioning
> is always a delicate process. Is there any recomendations to do before
> doing this? maybe some maintenace tasks on osx that would be helpful?

BACK UP, BACK UP, BACK UP. Never install an OS without backing up. In
21 years of Mac use I've never lost a partition or install because I
install an OS or updated an OS but that still doesn't mean I don't
back up all important documents before doing something potentially
dangerous (I've bought into all the Windoze hype because I've seen too
many Windoze systems go bellyup over the years).

> and finally, how difficult is to get a dual boot osx and ubuntu running?

Very easy! No WIKI needed ;P. If you have two partitions & enough
space on the one partition for Ubuntu you will have a dual-boot
machine after you're done. By editing the yaboot.conf file you'll also
be able to specify which OS auto-boots at startup (I wrote a Wiki for
that :).

> If would be great if some ubuntu-mac user would create a detailed wiki
> about this issues as I believe many people are in similar situation. A
> friend of mine would like to have a laptop running dualboot with OS9 and
> Linux for example. I would be happy to do the wiki myself when i finnish
> installing everything but on the man time i am too scared that i will
> get into trouble doing it. I switched very recently to mac and still i
> am not confident about instalation ad backup processes.

A Wiki for the partitioning bit would be useful indeed. The only
reason I went ahead full steam is because I'd already had the
experience of installing (successfully) YellowDogLinux on another
computer into its own partition (_not_ the first partition... I'm not
convinced that GNU/Linux needs to be in the first partition for yaboot
or BootX to work)

Eric.