Re: Booting to floppy
Ethan Benson wrote:
>
> On Mon, Feb 26, 2001 at 02:48:40PM -0800, Andrew Sharp wrote:
> > Um, yeah, that must be what I meant. Actually, what I meant is
> > this: the docs constantly talk about booting the rescue floppy for
> > this that and the other. But the "rescue" floppy for the powerpc
> > port is an ext2 file system, and doesn't boot at all on old world
> > macs, and I just assumed that it must be for new world macs. If
> > not, then the rescue floppy image is a complete hoax for powerpc.
>
> the rescue floppy has only one purpose on powerpc, and that is to
> provide the kernel image that is installed in the `install OS and
> kernel modules' step. the bootable rescue floppy for oldworld macs is
> the hfs-boot.img (or whatever its called).
I've never needed rescue.bin for that. Granted I've only done two
installs. ~:^) But there are two images called driver-1.bin and
driver-2.bin which one might guess have drivers on them. Never used
those either.
> > Maybe it is anyway. Obviously the constant references to the rescue
> > floppy in the docs are because the docs are just recycled i386 docs,
> > which is fine, but really, there should be something that says that
> > there is no real rescue floppy for powerpc. At least, there isn't a
>
> there is one, boot-hfs.img, except its broken in current boot
> floppies... there is no boot floppy for newworlds since no newworld
> has a floppy drive.
>
> > single floppy that boots to a prompt, unless you count "Insert root
> > file system floppy now and hit return".
>
> that is exactly how x86 rescue floppies work.
Well, no, actually. It boots up to a lilo prompt from which you can
mount your hard disk's root directory and like that.
There are two floppy images in the powerpc dist that might be
mentioned. One is called rescue.bin, the other boot-floppy-hfs.img,
and hence a newbie might easily think that the former is the rescue
floppy mentioned often in the docs, but is not bootable on old world
macs, it is an ext2 file system, actually. Maybe not bootable on
any macs since people keep saying that newworld macs don't have
floppy. Maybe they work on some other powerpc platforms, I don't
know.
> > So what I'm saying is that if you have an old world mac, the docs
> > and the install procedure are quite broken, and yes, I've already
> > volunteered to fix them. One thing at a time, though.
>
> unless someone figures out how to fix the oldworld boot floppies im
> not sure there is a point in documenting them :(
Uh, okay. I'm trying to see if I can build one with 2.2.18 that
works. It may be a few days, however, as my fastest mac isn't
fast. Maybe I should create a cross compile gcc on my x86
laptop....
a
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