Re: Current status on grub-installer on PowerMac
On 4/15/21 9:11 PM, Mark Cave-Ayland wrote:
>> Not sure why to pass "-c chrp" here as all the instructions I have seen for
>> PowerMac pass "-c UNIX".
>
> (goes and looks)
>
> From what I can see there is a mixture of creator types: chrp is mentioned for
> FreeBSD and BootX, whilst most of the grub references suggest using UNIX.
> Having a look around the OpenBIOS code I think the creator type is only used
> in the absence of a blessed directory, so either will do fine.
OK, I was already wondering about that. grub-install contains a bless utility
and function only, but not something for the UNIX filetype.
Question: If the blessing is sufficient and the setting of the filetype not necessary,
why does grub-install --macppc-directory=/boot/grub (with that being an HFS
filesystem) not create a working boot partition?
There is either a bug in GRUB or I'm using it incorrectly.
If we could use GRUB's own blessing utility and waive for hfsutils altogether, we could
simplify the current code in grub-installer for PowerMacs [1] even further. But at the
moment, the current changes are what I know is working and what's also documented in
the Gentoo wiki [2].
On the other hand, I know that Vladimir from GRUB upstream is an experienced programmer,
so I can't really believe he committed something like PowerMac support in GRUB without
properly testing it.
FWIW, the bootable CD also has the chrp/tbxi type set [3]. So, I'm not sure whether we
need that or not. Either way, I will perform further tests in the future, also with HFS+
instead of HFS and try to reduce the necessary tools to hfsprogs and GRUB.
>> sed -i 's!&device;:&partition;!'"$ofpath"'!g' $ROOT/boot/grub/System/Library/CoreServices/BootX
>
> Out of curiosity did it still work when you removed this?
Yes.
Adrian
> [1] https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/grub-installer/-/commit/a234f349ef13ddf3d756c4418716f2e6adeba3dc
> [2] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GRUB_on_Open_Firmware_(PowerPC)
> [3] https://salsa.debian.org/images-team/debian-cd/-/blob/master/tools/boot/bullseye/boot-powerpc#L23
--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org
`. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
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