howdy on the list i'm trying to build a raid on a power mac 8200/120 (just for evaluation; the final config has to run on an g3/400 b & w w/SCSI). trying it on an x86 pc is easy, you get it up an running very fast. i have a problem on the mac with setting the partition identifier from '0x83' (Linux standard) to '0xfd' (RAID automount). both tools, fdisk and pdisk, seem not to work well if you have partitioned that linux drives with the mac tool 'configure drives' (don't remember its title in english). this tool creates five partitions containing drivers and stuff, the first really usable partition is no. 6 (on scsi drives, on ata drives i guess its no. 7). the problem now is that i haven't got a tool to configure these partitions beneath no. 5 (e.g. to set the partition identifier to '0xfd')... fdisk comes from the pc (its capabilities is to work with the first four primary partitions or the first three primary and logical volumes in an existing extended drive...) so it doesn't work with that lots of partitions on the mac. to avoid this problem is to use two (or more ;) physical drives, partitioned under linux (using fdisk), containing *not* these lots of partitions. you can set the identifier here. additional, you need one drive to boot from (configured with the mac os tool, and therefore lots of partitions on it...) -- you have to access an hfs volume from open firmware in order to access the faked mac os system files for yaboot... a little proof for the inability of fdisk to access a via mac os tools partitioned drive follows: ------------8<---------------8<-------------8<-------------8<--------------- mail3:~ # fdisk /dev/sda Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel Building a new DOS disklabel. Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them. After that, of course, the previous content won't be recoverable. ------------8<---------------8<-------------8<-------------8<--------------- any help appreciated -- the best solution would be a tool which *can* access partitions beyond no.4... ;) tia and best regards, timo