Partitioning disk and installing two versions of an OS

[Richard McKay]

 Shravan Vasishth wrote:

>Sorry for taking up people's time.

Not a problem, the reason for the list is to help...

>I made the mistake of assuming that OS 9.1 can be installed on the new
>ibook (it can't).

I may be wrong but I think the only reason you couldn't install the 9.1 was
that there was already a newer OS on the disk (you said 9.2) and apple is
trying to help you from making a possible mistake. Besides do you really
need to use 9.1? What are you missing in 9.2 that you need 9.1? If you do
need it you might get around this by repartitioning the Disk with 3,4 or
more partitions and install OS 9.1 first and at the back of your disk (part
4 as you won't use it as often so speed won't be a problem) then installing,
not updating 9.2 to the first of your partitions (part 1 for emergency
situations in case of crash), then OS X to another partition and finally the
linux partition (you may need swap, boot and home partitions for this, I am
not familiar with YDL setup) but if you use YD why not see if the Unix roots
of OS X can do everything you need without it? You could install Darwin and
an X windows front-end and go from there or use fink (new version apparently
available today) or just terminal with programs such as emacs, MySQL and
others that are ported or available to the new OS?

>one with the Mac Standard
>format, and the other with an unallocated format. This is how the
>dual-boot installation is done for Yellowdog 2.0, with OS 9.1.

because the mac OS generally uses HFS+ format and YDL uses other linux file
system structures?

>However, the machine of course refused to install OS 9.1 on the Mac
>partition.

see above, install OS 9.1 first on new partitioned drive, then 9.2 on
different partition if you really need both.

> So I tried reinstalling OS X and OS 0S 9.2. This I did manage
>to do, but the one half of the disk that is still unallocated is not
>visible and not usable.

This is due to the file structure issue of the OS's above, unallocated is
not mac readable and needs to be repartitioned to gain the space back. The
rest you figured out yourself.

One thing you might consider if you repartition again is to have a/several
partitions for saving (an original or copy of) your files/work/preferences
as this may save a lot of work later if you need to reinstall, or simply to
simplify making backups...as they are easier to locate and protected from
crashes...

HTH,

Richard
--