[geeks] Anyone use XPostFacto?

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 01:06:10AM -0400, Phil Stracchino wrote:
>Hardware:  Bondi iMac, maximum memory (384M)
>Software:  one OS9.2 partition, one incomplete and badly hosed OS10.2
>partition, XPostFacto 4
>
>Finally got to retrying to reinstall the OSX partition with 10.4, but
>now XPostFacto seems to not want to let us do so.  If I select the
>option to install OSX from CD, it forces partition selection to the OS9
>partition.  This doesn't seem right ... unless to be able to install
>10.4, it *has* to be installed on the partition XPOstFacto is already
>installed on?
>
>Has anyone already used XPostFacto who can give me a quick five-minute
>primer on basic stuff like this?  As soon as we just verify we *can*
>install from the current set of CDs, my plan is to completely
>reinitialize the disk, install a clean OS9.2.3, reinstall XPostFacto,
>and do a clean Tiger install.

Xpostfacto is a strange beast. I have had trouble with different versions 
working or not, and on one computer had to install MacOS with a late version
of 3 and use 4 to actually run it.

The problem with the Bondi iMac is that it will not boot beyond 8000 megabytes.
The boot partition must be totally within the 8000 megabytes. OS9 and OSX 10.0
to 10.2 does not really have that resriction because it boots OS 9 drivers
and then boots OS X.

OS X 10.3 and up boot a UNIX kernel directly from the partition.

What I always do is to create an 8000 megabyte or less partition, install
OS9 on it, install Xpost facto and then install OSX all on the same
partition. If I have any other partitions, they are for data.

In your case, I don't think you want to do that. So you use the OS9 partition
as a "helper" disk. The computer boots OS9 drivers, boots OS9 and then runs
XPostFacto. XpostFacto plays around with the hardware (by replacing some of
the open boot code in ROM with code in RAM), and boots the OSX kernel from
the OS9 partition pointing it to the OSX partition as root.

So the steps are:

1. Install OS9 on the first partition which has to be 8000 megabytes or smaller.
2. Install XPostFacto on the OS9 partition.
3. Use XPostFacto on the OS9 partition to install Tiger on the OSX partition
   with the OS9 partition as a "helper" disk.

Note that any time you run software update and replace any kernel modules,
it will break. You have to reset the computer and boot from the OS9 partition
and run the "install everything" option of XPostFacto. This just replaces
the XPostFacto modules deleted by the update, it does not re-install OSX.

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM