Re: Performing installer tests on PowerMac with USB sticks

["Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net>]

Hi,

John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> > What about a funding? I would actually be willing to shell out some money

Mark Cave-Ayland wrote:
> Certainly if there were some funding available, this is something that I
> could look at if required.

If you do, i am ready for giving advise about libisofs architecture
and for reviewing changeset proposals.
As said, i am reluctant to accept large crowds of copyright holders,
but this can be solved by wrapping the new code in an extra library,
which then gets linked to libisofs optionally. (libjte is an example.)

But first we should explore the bootability of grub-mkrescue HFS+.


I wrote:
> > George Danchev tried whether it could substitute for genisoimage's HFS
> > on a virtual machine which booted the genisoimage ISO.
> > A user rported failure with
> >   $ qemu-system-ppc -boot d -cdrom repacked.iso -hda linux.img

> Do you have any more information on this?

It was in summer 2012. I see in the archives
  "ISO9660/HFS hybrid powerpc testers needed"
  https://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2012/06/msg00030.html
but with no valid replies to see.
George revoked his call for testers after first negative results.
  https://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2012/06/msg00031.html
Probably he got the failure reports in private or did own experiments.


> FWIW this is one of the ideal use cases for QEMU

I cannot judge Sparc emulation.
With x86 EFI firmware OVMF, you have to expect success even with clearly
inappropriate boot sectors. Partition table based images boot from virtual
CD-ROM and El Torito boots from virtual hard disk.
So success on OVMF does not predict success on real iron.


> bless the folder on the filesystem containing the bootloader and
> then set the type to TBXI (ToolBoXImage).

Hm. Can it be that there is a successor with "J" instead of "I":
grub-mkrescue asks xorriso to set creator and type of .disk_label:

          xorriso_push ("-hfsplus-file-creator-type");
          xorriso_push ("chrp");
          xorriso_push ("tbxj");
          xorriso_push ("/System/Library/CoreServices/.disk_label");

I don't think that "txbj" is a typo.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas