Ubuntu/Kubuntu on Mac G5.

[Larry Grover]

Brian Durant wrote:
> On 18. jan 2006, at 4.55, Larry Grover wrote:
> 
>>
>>> I want to install Kubuntu Dapper Flight 3 on a second SATA  internal  
>>> drive. In the system profile, my Macintosh HD shows up  with 
>>> "disk0s3"  as the BSD name, whereas the HD I want to install  on has 
>>> the BSD name  of "disk1s3". Does the command for "sata/ scsi: sudo 
>>> mount -t hfsplus / dev/sdaX /mount/point" still apply  for 
>>> Ubuntu/Kubuntu?
>>
>>
>> I'm a little fuzzy on how the BSD partition names map onto the  linux 
>> names (I've only got one dual boot OSX/linux system, and it  is in 
>> linux 99% of the time), but the second SATA drive in the  system 
>> (disk1 in BSD) should be sdb (second SCSI/SATA drive); s3  should be 
>> either partition 3 or 4 in linux, so either sdb3 or sdb4.
>>
>> If you boot the Dapper live CD you can probably figure it out using  
>> the fdisk command:
>> fdisk -l /dev/sdb
>> should list the partitions on the second SATA drive, and you should  
>> be able to figure out which linux partion is disk1s3 from the size.
> 
> 
> OK, I tried that and it seems to have found it. Gnome seems to see  both 
> my 152.7 GB Maxtor (Macintosh HD) and the other internal drive  that 
> appears to be the 74.5 GB /sdb. When I tried to mount them  however, 
> nothing seemed to happen. 

How, exactly, did you try to mount the partitions on the drive?  Did you 
get any error messages?

> /sdb has a 21.53 GB HFS +  partition, and 53 
> GB of free space. What I would like to do is to  create some partitions 
> on /sdb, while running the live-CD, to prepare  for installing Ubuntu. I 
> was thinking of doing something like this:
> 
> Partition #1 boot                16 MB    Debian Bootstrap
> Partition #2 swap                2 GB    Debian swap space
> Partition #3 ReiserFS            44.5 GB    Debian root file system
> Partition #4 fat32                8 GB    Shared Fat32 file system
> Partition #5 HFS + (Journalled) 20GB Mac OS X file system
> 
> 1) In some ways, I think I might like a home partition as well.

I always make a separate /home partition.  If for some reason you decide 
you need to do a reinstall, or install a different distro, it makes 
things easier.

You will need a newworld bootblock partition for the bootloader 
(yaboot).  Mine is 1 MB (I've read recommendations for 800 KB to 1 MB).

Here are a couple of pages which may help you with partitioning.  They 
are for installing debian on an iBook, but the information on 
partitioning should apply:

http://www.hispalinux.es/~data/ibook/x139.html
http://www.miketec.org/ibook/

> 2) Does mounting and sharing an HFS + partition between Mac OS X and  
> Ubuntu work these days? If not, then the HFS + partition isn't really  
> relevant. Then the FAT32 should be made larger and a home partition  added.

I dual boot an iBook (spend almost all my time in linux, though).  The 
few times I have mounted and copied files to my OSX (HFS+) partion, from 
inside linux, it worked.  So, from my very limited personal experience, 
it seems reliable enough.

> OS X (not sure about Tiger) has an issue with FAT32 that I found on a  
> debian posting:

- snip -

I haven't had any problems with FAT32 filesystems in OSX (Panther or 
Tiger), though my experience is limited to using USB memory sticks on a 
single boot (OSX Tiger) iMac.

Regards,
Larry