boot OS X, cd & o firmware fine - NO LINUX

[Dick Repasky <rrepasky@lack.ucs.indiana.edu>]

I've installed both gentoo ppc and OS X (10.3) on a dual-processor (450 
MHz) G4.  Yaboot boots OS X, the CD drive and open firmware just fine, but 
it won't boot Linux unless Linux is booted from open firmware. And, even 
then it boots Linux instead of giving me a yaboot prompt.

If I request Linux from the yaboot menu, Mac OS X is immediately booted 
without any error message or other indication that something is wrong.
In browsing the archives of this list, I learned that I should try
loading the kernel from a yaboot prompt that is obtained from open 
firmware.  When I enter the command

     boot hd:2,yaboot

Linux is booted.  In the flash between entering the command and the
screen blanking yaboot indicates that it is doing a secondary boot loader
and prints a message indicating that the boot partition of of the wrong
type and should be an Apple_Bootstrap partition.

Here are the data:

partition table listed by mac-fdisk:

/dev/hda1  Apple_partition_map Apple                (31.5k) Partition map
/dev/hda2           Apple_Boot eXternal booter       (8.5M) Unknown
/dev/hda3      Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap                (512.0M) Linux swap
/dev/hda4      Apple_UNIX_SVR2 Linux_root            (9.0G) Linux native
/dev/hda5           Apple_Free Extra               (128.0M) Free space
/dev/hda6            Apple_HFS Apple_HFS_Untitled_3  (9.4G) HFS
/def/hda7           Apple_Free                     (128.0M) Free space
/dev/hda8            Apple_HFS Apple_HFS_Untitled_4  (9.4G) HFS
/dev/hda9           Apple_Free                       (8.0k) Free space

Three partitions were created in the OS X disk utility. Then, in 
mac-fdisk the original /dev/hda3 was deleted, and space in it was used
to create /dev/hda3 and /dev/hda4.

yaboot config:

boot=/dev/hda2
device=hd:
partition=4
delay=15
timeout=4
install=/usr/lib/yaboot/yaboot
magicboot=/usr/lib/yaboot/ofboot

defaultos=linux
macosx=/dev/hda6
enablecdboot
enableofboot

image=/boot/kernel-2.6.10-r6
         label=Linux
         root=/dev/hda4
         partition=4
         sysmap=/boot/System.map-2.6.10-r6
         read-only


Is the problem that /dev/hda2, the partition to which I have installed
yaboot, is not Apple_Bootstrap but Apple_Boot external?  The partition
was created by the Mac OS X disk partitioning utility that can be
launched from the OS X install CD.  When the time came to repartition,
I noticed that the name was not exactly the name in the instructions,
and assumed that the partititon correct and that the instructions were
a little out of date.

If the partition type is indeed incorrect, is it safe to change the type 
of /dev/hda2?  mac-fdisk seems to lack a feature for changing just the 
type of a position, so I would have to delete it and recreate it with the 
correct type. But, I would be changing a partition that may have actually 
been created for some other use.  True or false?

If it is not safe to change the partition type of /dev/hda2, is it safe to 
take one of the free partitions (hda5 or hda7 or hda9) that were created 
by the OS X partition utility (to my surprise) and to set it up as
the apple boot partition?

And, finally, if /dev/hda2 is OK, what in the world is going on?

Thanks,

Dick Repasky