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Re: ppc prep boot



On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 01:11:12PM -0500, Phillip Strauss wrote:
> While formatting a drive today I just noticed the fs type of PPC PReP boot.
> I am by no means a ybin/yaboot expert (in fact very far from it) so excuse
> me if this question is just ridiculous.
> Would this be a valid file system for a bootstrap partition for my RS/6000?

yes, RS/6000 machines use x86 partition tables, and thier OF
apparently doesn't load a bootblock (lame IMO).  so you create a
bootstrap partition large enough to hold yaboot (800K is more then
enough).  and yaboot is dded directly to it.  ybin 1.0 and later
supports this with the `fstype=raw' configuration option.  

the partition must be type 0x41 (note i always get that mixed up its
0x4something) PReP Boot.  OpenFirmware uses this partition as the
bootblock on IBM machines.  

why IBM OF doesn't just try and load the first block on the disk, or
the first block on a partition when you do something like boot hd: or
boot hd:1 ill never understand...  that would eliminate the need for
these ugly kludgeboot partitions.

-- 
Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/

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