[rescue] Mac OS X .... Install .... WTF ?!

[Adam Kropelin]

Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. wrote:
> OK... so I'm trying to install Mac OS X 10.3 for the first time.
>
> This is on an iMac DV SE 500MHZ.
>
> Since I didn't want to mess with the existing hd, I dropped in a
> 6G generic Seagate I had kicking around....
>
> Booted 10.3 from the CD, got to the point asking the volume to
> install on... no volumes listed.
>
> Went to the Disk Utility, partitioned it up as one partition,
> go back to the installer... voila... I have a volume !
>
> BUT.... (there is always a but), it has a big red exclamation point
> and says I can not install or boot Mac OS X from that disk.

Heh...that one had me going for nearly an entire weekend a few months back.
The problem, best as I can tell, is if there is a pre-existing partition
table from $OTHER_OS, Disk Utility will not wipe it out. It will appear to
create a volume just fine but you'll end up with something the installer
won't let you install into. The solution, as I recall, is to go to Disk
Utility and select the entire disk (not the "empty" volume or the newly
created volume) and then use the "Erase" tool to erase the whole disk. (If
you have the "empty" volume or the new volume created you'll just erase the
volume and the bogus partition table will still be intact.) Then create a
new volume and proceed as normal.

The other thing I learned that fateful weekend is that the B&W cannot boot
from a hard disk in the secondary slave position, no matter what manner of
open fw kung-fu you apply. It will happily boot from PM, PS, and SM, and the
CDROM is still bootable in the SS position. Maybe this is just a peculiarity
of my B&W, but I bet not.

Hope this helps...
--Adam