[geeks] Anyone use XPostFacto?

[nate at portents.com]

> If for some reason you can no longer boot OSX, for example, software
> update replaces modules replaced by XPostFacto, you will have to reboot
> into OS9. The easiest way for me was to remove the power cord and battery
> from laptops, I've never actually done it with a desktop. I assume that
> minimally you would have to zap PRAM, you may have to hit the CUDA
> button, or remove the battery.

Better methods include:

1. On machines of the "beige G3" and later era, holding down the option
key after chime and before boot switches between booting the Classic OS
and OS X (and eventually Apple included a graphical OS selector when you
hold down the option key in New World Macs)
2. Set up open firmware to stop at it's prompt when booting, so that you
can type a command to go into Classic or OS X when you boot (useful if you
switch back and forth often)

> Another way that has worked for me is to just keep rebooting and let it
> crash or hang, eventually it resets itself and reboots in OS9.

If the situation is that bad, you could either reset PRAM
(Command-Option-P-R) to revert to booting Classic or, if you have an
external bootable drive, hold down Command-Option-Shift-Delete to skip
booting the drive you have set to boot in PRAM and boot something else.

>>i like the idea of a root partition, a users partition, and an
>>applications partition if it turns out you need more than one root...
>
> I don't know if you can do that. I've certainly never done it, and it will
> waste a lot of disk space because lots of things want to be installed in
> the root partition.

Some of it could be accomplished with symbolic links, or alternatively one
could just take advantage of the fact that even apps installed to
"Applications" don't have to live in that folder and can be moved
elsewhere and run just fine.

Also, for desktop machines with the OS X boot partition limit, I'd
recommend just getting a nice SCSI, PATA or SATA controller card that has
good OF drivers on it and doesn't have any of those silly ATA boot issues
that Apple never fixed (even though the 'beige G3's had an upgradable ROM
SIMM).

- Nate