psyche

Ah, so continues my troubled installation of Yellow Dog Linux, which has in fact blossomed into an epic with significance far greater than that of a simple (*cough*) installation, but in fact carries that of an introspective into the hard drive of my soul. I am writing this, logged in as root (I know, I know, never log in as root), using Apple’s Backup 3 to explode the backup of my HD from before this into a folder on my external HD. I backed it up so I could partition the drive and did so. This morning I installed Mac OS X onto one of the partitions and booted up from the Yellow Dog LiveCD, having again failed to create this ominous-sounding “bootstrap partition” that the installer begs me for. Thus, it failed.

So, I returned to glorious Mac OS X and set about recovering my files. I failed. First I tried the shortcut of viewing the contents of the .fullBackup file and finding the .sparseImage file - a disk image - and mounted it. I dragged and dropped the files I wanted - apps, music etc. - to their relevant locations. As I tried to reorder my Dock - in the hope that I would now sculpt a system identical to before but with this extra 14GB partition for me to Yellow Dog up once I had learned more about the installation process - I found that Sibelius G7 had no icon (it’d reverted to the sort of blank document look). Horrified, I renamed it from “G7″ to “G7.app”. Its icon reappeared. I launched it and it worked, startup music and all. It then said it wasn’t registered - bollocks! Somehow, whatever obscure file (I think it’s genuinely obscure, not some text file in Application Support which declares boldy “U HAV REGISTRD G7″) I needed had been left behind or lost or something. Then I found that none of the apps I’d copied from the .sparseImage were working.

I logged in as root, made a dummy account, deleted the “farhan” account, left the dummy account and resolved to strive for my previous aim - return to original setup albeit with this partition - and am thus exploding the backup properly while holding the belief that perhaps the Backup app reads some data from the .fullBackup file that will make all my files bloody work. Then I expect I’ll have to log in in Single-User Mode and copy across all the stuff without using Mac OS X at all - since I imagine I will have to modify the “System” folder (*gulp*) and that won’t work while OS X is running. Alternatively, and easier-ly, I could boot this comp up in Target disk mode or whatever so it acts as a Firewire disk and do all the copy-tasks from my iBook. Once my old system is restored, I’ll clean it up (delete Classic [lol], run an Archive and Install of Tiger so as to repair messed up system files etc.) and learn properly how to install Yellow Dog and, hopefully, do it.

These obstacles are great and many.

Pax

P.S. About root. This is nice. There’s a strange but nice feeling being here, with nothing in my Home folder but Desktop and Library, and the power to corrupt my computer at will… hmm.

P.P.S. I love UNIX

EDIT: Ok ok new plan. My proto-plan was to install Linux on the external drive. However, I thought this’d be impossible for some reason and left it. However, while actually reading the documentation, I’ve found the hallowed “install firewire” command. My goodness! Must try it. Still expanding that Macintosh HD backup file…

EDIT: Nope, nope. Perhaps I’ll just do it on my computer… http://131.204.27.45/ydl-howto/ looks pretty damn complicated. However, the “install-firewire” command looks simple. Hmm. Perhaps I’ll try it once I recover from this badly-planned mess. Yes, it was my fault. Lol.

EDIT: Ok reversion. The reason it didn’t work initially is that I actually made two discrete partitions (”Mac OS X” and “Linux”) when in fact I was meant to designate the “Linux” section as free space. Then the installer takes care of the Bootstrap, Swap and… other… partitions. So, with my entire HD in its original format - albeit in a folder on my external HD - I’m once again installing OS X, having set the partitions correctly this time… I must get this done!

EDIT: You know that 75% of the stuff I downloaded which I thought was unnecessary? Right. The three .isos I chucked were in fact necessary. Bollocks. Also, having botched the installation (not having the disks required to complete it) I must now repartition and then reinstall OS X (this is now the third time). I can get this done and I will.