[G4] Please help an OSX Dummy

[Charles Turner]

On Friday, January 17, 2003, at 07:12  AM, Power Macintosh G4 List 
wrote:

> Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2003 14:45:27 -0700
> From: Doug McNutt <douglist at macnauchtan.com>
> Subject: Re: [G4] Please help an OSX Dummy
>
> At 13:43 -0600 1/16/03, Richard A. Northouse wrote:
>> A) I have a Power Mac G4 (currently using OS9.2.2, 733Mhz, 1.12Gb RAM,
>> CD-RW, 38Gb ATA, 27Gb available).  Should I create a new partition 
>> for OSX?
>
> I strongly recommend it if for no other reason than the ability to 
> truly boot into OS 9 by setting the startup disk - er partition. Steve 
> seems to want to do away with that. As of now OS neXt will use your 
> existing 9.2 on whatever partition it resides to do "classic" mode.

This is what I've done also.

In the book "OS-X the Missing Manual" they suggest making a copy of 
your OS9 system folder and then setting OSX classic system preferences 
to use that copy. This may be overly conservative; I can't say that I 
know this has saved me any trouble, but it comforts me to know that OSX 
or some classic mode configuration change that I might try won't 
clobber my 'production' OS9.  I still need to boot standalone OS9 
because one important application (Finale) has a printing problem when 
running under OSX classic mode, and because my audio recording/editing 
application (Audiodesk) won't run at all under classic mode.

I like having an HD partition available for installing the next OS 
release, whatever it might be, so that the install won't affect in any 
way my current running OS. Once the new OS is up and running then this 
old OS partition is still available as an emergency bootable system. 
Having a second bootable OSX system is particularly handy since the 
Apple supplied OSX bootable CDs (system install CD) will not let you 
drop out of the installer to a command line or to the finder. It will, 
however, let you drop out to the OSX disk utility for performing 
general HD repair or new HD preparation tasks.

Another emergency boot system option is to install a system on an 
external Firewire HD. This can be booted via the restart and hold down 
the 'option' key method. I don't know how new the Mac has to be to have 
this feature. My 2001 G4 'digital audio' machine can do it.

The partition for OSX needs to be larger than one might think. I 
learned this the hard way. Apparently there is some dynamic use of 
space there (swap space presumably). If the OSX boot partition runs 
short of space, and 'short' occurs before free space gets to zero, 
unpleasant things happen like preferences get lost.

My OSX 10.2.3 boot partition is 4.7GB. That is OK as long as I watch 
carefully what is accumulating in my home directory, in the 
applications directory, etc. But it doesn't take long running things 
eg. like Toast/Jam creating lots of audio files, to run low on space. 
Applications typically can be setup to control where they place their 
files, but the first time you run some new application you may forget 
to set that and end up getting into boot drive free space problems. 
I'll eventually get annoyed enough to try to move my home directory off 
of the OSX boot partition.

So I don't know what to recommend except to say that a 4.7GB partition 
hasn't been large enough to be completely safe for me.

-ct