Best options for disk-formatting on PowerPC? (mac-mini)

[Garance A Drosihn]

It's so rare that I have to partition a disk that I'm pretty sure my
knowledge is out-of-date, especially on PowerPC.  The last time I did
any disk partitioning on PowerPC was back in early 2005!

If I go to   http://www.FreeBSD.org/platforms/ppc.html

for advice, the "How can I install FreeBSD/ppc" section says "Please
follow the instructions <here>", where "<here>" is:
     http://people.freebsd.org/~grehan/iso_install.txt

That, in turn, is the ISO_INSTALL.txt file from 6.0-RELEASE, a page
which is also linked to from:    http://wiki.freebsd.org//powerpc
None of these say much about partitioning.

What I have is a new-to-me MacMini, with a brand new disk in it, and
nothing installed on that disk.  I also have an external FW drive
which has all the freebsd filesystems from my other Mac-Mini install.
I've just updated the system on that drive so it is the up-to-date
version of FreeBSD 7.1-STABLE.

What I want to end up with is the new internal disk with two bootable
MacOS partitions, two OFW-bootable partitions (one for 7.x, one for
8.x), one swap partition, and a few other filesystems for freebsd.
Since I want bootable partitions, as far as Apple is concerned the
disk has to be partitioned as "Apple Partition Map".  Once I create
the freebsd partitions, I'd want to use dump/restore to copy the
partitions from the older firedrive to the internal HD on the newer
Mac-Mini.

If I start with Apple's "Disk Utility" app for the first cut at
partitioning, I can use the version on MacOS 10.4 or 10.5.  The
last time I did this, I used the 10.4 version to create a few unix
volumes.  I notice that if I use the 10.5 version of that Apple
utility, there is no option for unix-formatted volumes.

So I took the new mac-mini and booted it into firewire target mode.
I hooked that and my other firewire disk up to the older mac mini,
and booted that Mac-mini into MacOS 10.4.

     = = = = = = = = = = = =

And here I am, about 12 attempts later, and I still haven't gotten
the freebsd partitions from the external FW disk to the new internal
disk.  I did a number of things that seemed plausible, and while
MacOS was always happy with the disk in the new Mac-Mini, I could
never get sysinstall on my 7.x FreeBSD system to see that disk, or
any of the volumes that Disk Utility created on that disk.

I'm still plugging away at my latest attempt, but I thought that
maybe I should ask if there is some standard strategy that I should
be following.  Or might there be a problem with having two firewire
disks connected at the same time?  Or might there be a problem with
freebsd talking to a "firewire disk" which is really some other Mac
in FW Target mode?

I've started to write a request for help in the middle of each of my
other attempts, and kept stopping myself when I thought of "just one
more thing" I should try before asking.  I think I'm going to send
this one out while I'm waiting for my latest MacOS install to finish,
and follow up with more details if my latest idea doesn't work.

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad at gilead.netel.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer           or  gad at freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih at rpi.edu