Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

We were asked to check out a 256MB Kingston pen drive which a Mac person 
looked at and found a non-deletable 50MB Mac partition labelled TCF_2005 
and the rest was a DOS partition from which he deleted all the files.  He 
said he could write to that partition with Mac.  He could not repartition 
it or delete the Mac partition.

Someone else also found two partitions (with Win XP?) and type CD-ROM 
(probably with David's linux floppy disk which I had given him to test 
these things with).  He gave me the thing to try to repartition.

DOS can't find the drive at all.

David's 1-floppy USB linux found it as Model: TCF_2005 (not anywhere on 
the web, maybe the name of a conference given by the local TCF bank) and 
Type:  CD-ROM.  The info in the partition was on the pen drives, which may 
have been given away at a conference.  (Third-hand info and/or guesses).

I am attempting to look at it with the hfs module for apple file systems, 
using the Slackware 10.2 bare.i kernel.  I had to copy over the modules 
using DOS or BL3 first because that particular kernel is not capable of 
reading the Slackware 10.2 CD (it is in DOS format)!

I found modules.dep in that package and online and no dependencies are 
listed for hfs.o

insmod hfs.o

Unresolved symbol:  (all of the following)
generic_file_llseek
generic_commit_write
unlock_new_indoe
generic_read_dir
block_read_full_page
__out_of_line_bug
block_sync_page
cont_prepare_write
event
mark_buffer_dirty
block_write_full_page
iget4_locked
generic_block_bmap

hfsplus gives me an even longer list

Is this something to do with the USB pen drive being write-protected 
somehow?  A shortcoming of linux?  There are two identical ones donated to 
where we used to volunteer.

More on Macs and partitions.

The Mac external scsi hard drive (which linux found at first but could not 
read the partition table, then could not find at all) was pronounced dead 
by our Mac expert (not recognzed in his machine either).  Another external 
drive crashed his OS but two others worked.  We downloaded the music 
notation software that had been on it (a version from 2001 instead of 
1994) and transferred it via zip disk, with the scsi zip drive plugged 
through the dead external hard drive because we had no direct cable from 
zip drive to laptop.  It worked even with the termination all backwards. 
Mac had to be upgraded to OS 9.1 first to run this software (which is full 
of images) and with 64MB it boots even more slowly than with 8.0.  It took 
so long that at first we thought something was broken.

Since it runs slowly and displays 7 copies of the same zip disk, each with 
a warning about file sharing not being enabled, all of which have to be 
put into the trash before you can eject the disk, but the Mac keeps 
putting the icons back onto the screen as fast as you trash them, the 
recipient of this laptop computer returned it to us and will use the 
desktop we gave him instead (128MB RAM, 3GB, 100MHz), for which we have a 
direct cable to the scsi zip drive.

We could in theory put linux or BSD onto this Powerbook 233MHz with 64MB 
RAM and 1GB hard disk. But linux is working beautifully in 24MB or even 
16MB RAM and at 100MHz in 50MB of hard disk.

keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org