About OF patches (was: Re: Stuck on install of 7600/120)
On 30 May, this message from Michael Shuey echoed through cyberspace:
> If you have an old-world Mac, read www.netbsd.org's macppc System Disk
> Tutorial (http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/SystemDisk-tutorial/). Since
> the OF on oldworlds is buggy (to be polite) you should really run Apple's
> OF updater first. Also, you may need to patch the OF updater (manually, see
> http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/SystemDisk-tutorial/of105patch.html )
> if you want to boot off a non-Apple disk. I needed some extra cruft in my
> nvramrc to retry booting several times since the disk I was installing to
> takes a few seconds to spin up.
>
> And last (but not least), there's not enough space in the nvramrc for both
> the disk spinup patch and the console/OF patch. Choose wisely.
Note that the above-mentioned patches (apparently) add some patch code
to the xcoff-loader and to the tftp-loader. I guess nobody really neeeds
the tftp loader on those machines (anybody found out how that is
supposed to work?), and the xcoff loader is only useful if you want to
boot kernels directly off a floppy.
So depending on your needs you might be able to leave those parts out.
In addition, the boot command magic can be done smaller. Instead of
defining a (lengthy) whole new command, one can add the right magic
directly into the boot-command variable, like so:
[mlan@piglet ~]$ nvsetenv boot-command
begin ['] boot catch 1000 ms cr again
(Yes, the <ms> command delays <number on stack> miliseconds ;-)
And finally, remember that most (all?) OF patching is only useful if you
need it to boot; unless it patches PCI intialization (don't think so),
it will anyway be _useless_ once Linux is up.
With all this considered, you should be able to add into nvramrc
everything that is relevant to you.
Cheers
Michel
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