Re: hfs boot floppy versions
Thanks for this very informative email, i have no time to handle this, but
other with oldworld interest may show up and fix it. The etch release is still
some time off though, so we have time.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
On Mon, Oct 31, 2005 at 02:56:52PM +0100, Christian Müller wrote:
>
> >On Mon, Oct 31, 2005 at 03:00:39AM +0100, Christian Müller wrote:
> >
> >
> >>>That is beside the point. The miboot stuff wasn't included for legal
> >>>reasons,
> >>>and i don't even understand why it was included in woody.
> >>>
> >>
> >>Yep, remember reading that somewhere - would it be possible to take
> >>the NetBSD code producing ofwboot.xcf, legal-wise or is it also
> >>unfree in the debian terms?
> >>
> >
> >
> >No idea of what that even is, could you describe it and provide a
> >pointer to
> >it ?
> >
> The idea:
> * http://ezine.daemonnews.org/200009/sb.html gives a technical
> oversight, pretty scsi-centric though - the boot stages netbsd uses are
> described thoroughly though - there's also a nice figure that
> illustrates things, but the image quality is horrible. They still work
> with a load-base of 4000, after SystemDisk patches are applied it's
> 600000. After all, the article is from 2000, things may have changed.
>
> Other links of interest:
> *
> ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-2.0.2/macppc/INSTALL.html#Available%20Boot%20Media
> (explains "partition zero" boot approach which results in the 3stage
> process depicted above and a 2stage process where OpenFirmware looks itself
> for ofwboot.xcf on partitions it is capable of reading)
> *
> ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-2.0.2/macppc/INSTALL.html#Open%20Firmware%20boot%20syntax
>
> * http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/faq.html (lengthy faq)
> * http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?ofwboot+8.macppc+NetBSD-current
> (ofwboot manpage)
> *
> http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?installboot+8.macppc+NetBSD-current
> (installboot manpage)
>
> The ofwboot manpage tells where 3-stage and 2-stage boot-process meet:
>
> ofwboot *ofwboot* is installed via installboot(8)
> <http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?installboot+8.macppc+NetBSD-current>
> on systems with Open
> Firmware versions less than 3. It is not necessary to
> spec-
> ify this file name, as it is stored in a special
> location on
> the disk, partition ``zero''. For example, the following
> command might be used to boot from a SCSI device with
> ID 2:
> *0 >boot scsi-int/sd@2:0*.
>
> ofwboot.xcf *ofwboot.xcf* is in XCOFF format. This file is used on
> all
> Open Firmware 3 systems, and on Open Firmware systems
> prior
> to 3 when the bootloader is not installed in partition
> ``zero'', such as from an ISO-9660 format CD-ROM.
>
>
> * http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/SystemDisk-tutorial/ (NetBSD also
> messes with real-base, sure they will have their reasons, but it will
> make a dual boot machine to a classic mac os uncomfortable - though mac
> os boots with the tampered with real-base, but resets it to default.
> i've read about systems prior to the beige G3 that reset many more of
> the boot variables to defaults <- maybe hack a forth script into nvram
> named bootlinux/bootbsd that sets proper variables and afterwards does 0
> bootr if there is space in nvram for own forth functions <- are they
> kept like varaibles I set??)
>
> So in theory, I should be apple to boot it via OpenFirmware and
> ofwboot.xcf on a filesystem OF understands (2stage) or by putting it at
> load-base in partition zero (3stage).
>
> I had trouble with the partition zero method, but I actually did manage
> with a 2.4 OpenFirmware to fetch ofwboot.xcf from a iso9660 style cd.
> It loads properly, greets with "NetBSD/macppc OpenFirmware Boot 1.10" -
> it then asks for a kernel to boot, that's where I got stuck again.
> Either I did not find the right format+path to tell him where to look
> for the kernel (doc says OpenFirmware-Style path, but with "/" as
> opposed to "\" to separate directories in a path) or it does not work at
> this point (speaking for the Beige G3 I'm testing with, of course). It
> might be that this is just unsupported for OFs < 3.
>
> I *think* it is a size-issue that the NetBSD team uses ofwboot.xcf
> instead of using one big xcoff-kernel-image, speculating though.
> Somewhere I read a post saying that it might be possible to load a
> vmlinuz.xcoff directly via OpenFirmware command (which would render the
> extra ofwboot.xcf NetBSD uses pointless), I did not succeed in doing
> so. I tried it with boot-devie set to
> ide1/@0:,\INSTALL\POWERPC\VMLIN001.INI - if someone succeeded with
> something like this, please come forward =).
>
> Just thinking aloud: How difficult would it be to prepare a floppy that
> would simply boot a cd? My understanding, might be wrong, is that this
> is the case with isolinux where the "boot-floppy" is fetched via
> el-torito into RAM and then goes from there to start a bloated system.
> Wouldn't it be possible to let :something: like isolinux boot from a
> real floppy on those oldworlds which is then responsible for getting a
> bootable cd up and running - ideally this :something: would really only
> just be enough to let cds boot which would have booted on macs with OF
> 3+ without any help. A helper disk based on miboot, so to speak. This
> way installer teams on all distributions just have to focus on providing
> OF3 bootable cds - if it were not for the legal problems of miboot and
> those macs that don't have a cd-drive =).
>
> Doing it fool-proof "partition zero"-wise is also not easy to do. One
> is faced with different load-base settings, so you would have to know
> prior to loading the loader where to put it - work-around might be more
> than one entry-point for the code, at 4000, 600000, etc. But this is
> too much of hazzle for hardware that's, basically, obsolete *no-nag*.
>
>
> So long,
> Christian
>
> ps: btw, sorry for the personal mails, they account to me being lazy and
> lame using the overly simple reply button :)
>
>
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