Re: Why it's so difficult to fix PowerMac booting for good

[Frank Scheiner <frank.scheiner@web.de>]

Hi Adrian,

On 10.05.23 10:24, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> [...]
> If we could get Apple PowerMac machines to boot from a FAT filesystem, the licensing
> issue with hfsprogs would no longer be a headache. According to Apple's documentation,
> booting from a FAT boot partition should work [4] but I have never gotten around to
> testing that.
>
> So, if anyone has the time and enthusiasm to be able to get an Apple PowerMac to boot
> off a FAT partition, please give it a try and let me know. If it works, we can replace
> the current bootloader installation in grub-installer [2] and fix the issue for good.

See [5] for an implementation from end of 2018 (worked for me on a 11,2
Power Mac G5 and a Mac mini G4). The discussion that followed might be
also of interest.

[5]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2018/12/msg00054.html

Cheers,
Frank