Mounting the boot partition!

miltoncsl · n00b Joined: 26 Sep 2021 Posts: 6

Hello,

I'm new to Gentoo and I'm trying to install it on a Mac Mini PowerPC G4 late 2005! I was following the installation wiki (https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:PPC) but I encountered some difficulties!
First in section 5 [Creating file systems] when formatting the /dev/sda1 partition I get this message:

"Lived ~# mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sda1

WARNING: Number of clusters is 32 bit FAT is less then suggested minimum.
mkfs.vfat: Too few blocks for viable filesystem"

Then, in the Chrooting section [1.5 - Mounting the boot partition] I get this message:

"mount /dev/sda1 /boot

mount: /boot: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error."

What should I do to resolve these issues and be able to install Gentoo on my Apple?

eccerr0r · Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2021 10:33 pm Post subject:

You should use fat16 if your partition is small. Seems 32MB is the smallest FAT32 partition possible.
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Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

miltoncsl · n00b Joined: 26 Sep 2021 Posts: 6

hello eccerr0r,

How do I do this if mac-fdisk doesn't allow me to delete partition 1 (/dev/sda1) in order to recreate it larger! When I try to do this I get the following message:

"Can't delete entry for the map itself"

It's not clear how I can create, format and mount partition 1 (/dev/sda1) for the yaboot installation!

cboldt · Veteran Joined: 24 Aug 2005 Posts: 1046

You're changing filesystem type, a "mkfs" species of command.

See `man mkfs.msdos`

Generally this makes the data on the partition "lost," but a mkfs command doesn't touch the partition table

Edit to add, what happens when you do "mkfs.vfat -F 16 ..." rather than "-F 32"

As far as unable to mount, that's a function of the fstab line. You can try to mount manually. "mount -t vfat /dev/sda /boot" - assuming the mount point /boot exists. If the mount point does not exist, create it with "mkdir /boot"

jburns · Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2021 1:33 am Post subject:

Do not mount the /boot partition! If you created 4 partitions on the disk you do not have a /boot partition.

When you install yaboot it will write the proper contents to /dev/sda1. /dev/sda1 does not have a filesystem.

When you install yaboot in /dev/sda2 you may need to format the partition with an HFS file system but you do not have to mount the partition and there is no need to write anything to it except for when yaboot is installed.

You do not need a FAT filesystem.

Edit:
When you make the fstab do not make entries for /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2. If you do the machine may not boot.

Svante · n00b Joined: 06 Dec 2021 Posts: 1

I was reading this exact part of ppc handbook today and I also got lost there as its not written clearly enough. But what they're trying to say is that you don't use extra /boot partition on ppc G4. Entire system is on root partition, which is, according to default scheme used in the handbook, /dev/sda4.

In the future, always read the handbook carefully and more than once, especially if something is not clear to you and also if the handbook is mentioning multiple options for various types of hardware, as it's in this case.