Re: Why it's so difficult to fix PowerMac booting for good
Hello,
On 6/1/23 11:56 PM, Linux User #330250 wrote:
> On 06/02 2023 06:25 Ben Westover wrote:
>> It turns out that adding &device; alone is not enough since it refers to
>> only the drive and not the partition along with it. &device;:&partition;
>> is what was actually needed. Fixed script is attached.
>
>
> Wow. Thanks. On my Power Mac G5, &device; alone always worked. Strange.
>
> One thing that concerns me a bit is putting Linux's CHRP boot script
> into /System/Library/CoreServices/BootX, which is specific to Mac OS X.
> Why is this necessary?
> ...
It's /boot/grub/System/Library/CoreServices/BootX, probably necessary to
make "blessing" work.
> To me it makes sense to not copy what other OSes do. So, for Linux I use
> more than one partition as it has always been the way, even on x86.
> That's why, for my installations, I create an Apple_Boot (or
> Apple_Bootstrap) partition just for Linux. It has my "stage1", my CHRP
> boot script (along with a shiny icon) and my GRUB along with my initial
> 1st stage GRUB configuration. Why do I prefer this? Because now, the
> CHRP script will be able to rely on &device; (and &partition;) to
> identify itself, while I use GRUB on this partition to find my actual
> Linux boot partition (which may or may not be the same as the root
> partition). This is possible because GRUB supports finding partitions
> and (Linux) filesystems based on their UUIDs rather than specifying
> fixed disk/partition numbers. AFAIK GRUB supports a wide range of
> filesystems, including ext2/3/4, HFS, HFS+, VFAT, exFAT, btrfs, ZFS, and
> XFS. So my Linux root / and my Linux boot /boot can be on a partition of
> any of those filesystems and GRUB will find it based on the UUID I have
> it look for. ...
IMO, the most important benefit of having an Apple_Bootstrap partition
is that it can't be trashed easily in Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X since it
doesn't show up on the Desktop.
I find the default use of UUIDs in GRUB (and elsewhere) irritating,
since it makes restoring filesystems (or copying them to other systems)
more difficult. Luckily, UUIDs aren't really unique; an old UUID can be
re-used when a new filesystem is created. On systems where I use GRUB, I
generally disable the use of UUIDs or keep a known good grub.cfg that
uses LABELs or real paths instead.
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