Re: double booting with iMac (Bondie blue, rev 1)

On Tue, 2017-10-31 at 21:56 +0100, SFM wrote:
> Hi PPC enthusiasts !
> 
> I have embarked in the (apparently suicidal) mission of installing OpenBSD 6.2 on the very first iMac, which is running Mac OS 8.6. I also have a Mac OS X CD which I use only for partitioning through disk utility. 
> 
> Progress :
> 
> I Downloaded the iso image OpenBSD 6.2 macppc and Burned it into a bootable CD, 
> 
> Partitioned my only hard drive with two equally sized HFS+ partitions. Mac OS 8.6 is installed in the first one. Goal: installing OpenBSD in the second HFS+ partition, keeping my MacOS partition intact.
> 
> The problem:
> 
> Although I followed the partitioning advise on MacPPC.install, the OpenBSD installer (i do not remember anymore if it was fdisk or pdisk) states that the drive does not have a valid partition table and shows the entire space as unallocated!
> 
> The request:
> 
> Someone, anyone willing to help me make my wish come true of installing OpenBSD in this baby, could help me with the following:
> 
> 1) A brief but powerful description of the partitioning process. 
> 
> 2) a brief explanation of how is one supposed to “use Mac OS to move the bootloader to the first partition of the disk”, which is the last message after a successful installation (pretty shocking to read that if you just got rid of exactly that OS;  I did this mistake in the past, twice) 
> 
> For both of these matters, The information contained in the installation document is simply not Enough for double booters. I wish that could be different.
> 
> Additionally, there seems to be strong disagreement on wether openfirmware allows booting from a usb stick, even more when it comes to older machines, like my iMac. Has anyone here had any successful experiences with this ?
> 
> Thank you very much in advance for any hints, comments and help !
> 
> Raymundo.-

I was just able to install onto a Mac G4 Cube last week.  I will let
someone more experienced than me help more, but I will give a couple
notes:

1) booting off USB thumb drive may be possible, but it is not
officially supported.  If you are able to boot the OpenBSD installer
from a CD, then you shouldn't need to do this

2) I wasn't attempting to dual-boot, but my understanding of the
install notes is that you want the first partition (i.e. the Mac
partition) to be HFS+ and the second partition to be set up as
"unused."  I'm not sure why the installer would think you don't have a
valid partition table, though...

3) “use Mac OS to move the bootloader to the first partition of the
disk” -- this just means copying 'ofwboot' to the root folder of your
mac partition