The YDL 2.0 installer automatically installs and activates 'ybin', a utility to install yaboot. If you have classic Mac OS (pre Mac OS X) installed on your computer before installing YDL, the YDL installer should automatically configure a dual-boot for your system. The installer does not, however, automatically configure a dual or triple boot with Mac OS X.

If you desire to have YDL, Mac OS 9.x, and Mac OS X, we suggest a partition map similar to the one that follows:

We currently advise installing YDL before installing Mac OS X. While this is recommended, it will present a problem. The OS X installation will wipe out your system boot defaults making OS X the default booting OS rather then booting yaboot's boot menu. This topic should give you the necessary means to solve this problem.

What is ybin and how's it used?
ybin is a utility written by Ethan Benson which simplifies the installation of the yaboot bootloader and provides a multi-boot menu. Your system's /etc/yaboot.conf file contains certain configuration derivatives that are understood and utilized by ybin. For specifics, see the ybin man page.

The ybin utility is located in /usr/sbin. When executed the program will re-create your bootloader partition based upon any new values in /etc/yaboot.conf.

How do I add Mac OS 9 to yaboot/ybin's boot menu?
First, you must know the partition of your OS 9 installation. If you don't know this, you might use the following command as root ("Super User") to determine this.

/sbin/parted /dev/hda print
(this assumes you're looking for OS 9 on your primary ATA hard drive)

The above screenshot shows example output. In this case, we're looking for an HFS partition that is OS 9. This example shows two HFS partition. One has the "flag" boot so we know this is the bootloader partition. That must mean that partition '9' is the Mac OS 9 partition in this example.

If the YDL installer did not automatically setup dual-boot with your OS 9 partition, you can use the above information to setup this up. The example above has an OS 9 partition of: /dev/hda9 (partition 9 on the first ATA drive).

To add this to boot menu, edit /etc/yaboot.conf and add the line (near the top) that says:

macos=/dev/hda9

Of course, remember to replace 'hda9' with your OS 9 drive and partition number. When you've done this, save the changes and run "/usr/sbin/ybin". This will re-create your bootloader partition. Upon reboot, the multi-boot menu should have a new entry for Mac OS 9.

How do I add Mac OS X to yaboot/ybin's boot menu?
Adding OS X to the boot menu is very similar to adding OS 9. Due to current limitations in the YDL installation program, we currently recommend that you install Mac OS X after installing YDL 2.0. This will, however, create a situation in which your computer will automatically boot into OS X rather then presenting the yaboot/ybin menu. To correct this on most New World ROM macs, you can hold down the "option" key after the system startup chime and boot into Linux temporarily for the sake of re-running ybin (adding the proper info to /etc/yaboot.conf first, though).

Users of first generation New World ROM machines (original iMac, '99 PowerBook, Blue and White G3) will need to follow more complex steps to get back into Linux. We will add this additional information to this topic in the near future.

Once you have made it into Linux, you can run the "parted" program as per the OS 9 instructions above to determine what your OS X partition is. If you have 9 and X on the same drive, you'll need to do some guess work to determine which HFS partition is for OS X.

After you've found this information, add the following to /etc/yaboot.conf:

macosx=/dev/hda10
(for the sake of this example, we're pretending our OS X partition is on the first ATA drive and the 10th partition.)

Now, just re-run "ybin" and reboot your computer. The yaboot/ybin menu should now contain an option to boot Mac OS X.