Re: Beige G3 webserver

[Michael Lorenz <macallan%netbsd.org@localhost>]

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Hello,

On May 2, 2008, at 18:02, Al - image hosting services wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Fri, 2 May 2008, Michael Lorenz wrote:
> > You don't need that. On the beige G3 the partition zero method should
> > work and I doubt that OF 2 can read HFS anyway - you'd have to use a
> > FAT filesystem. Just wipe the first few sectors of the disk to get
> > rid of the apple partition table and run disklabel - don't bother
> > with pdisk unless you want to share the disk with MacOS.
>
> I searched for for "partition zero" and I didn't find anything that  
> tell
> me how to do this manually (the instructions that I found said to  
> use the
> installer). I maybe over complicating this, but I have not sleep to  
> speek
> of in days, becuase it is so critical that I get another server setup.

installboot(8)
Basically you write a tiny loader into the first few blocks of the  
first partition which loads the actual boot loader ( usually / 
ofwboot ) which then loads the kernel.

> I can wipe the disk with "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sd0c bs=8k"
> Then disklabel -e /dev/sd0c
>
> Ok, that seems strait forward, but what is partition zero  
> filesystem and
> what do put on that partition. From what I read it is bootx.

No. ffs has enough room for the 1st stage loader.

> I guess the other questions is how do I speify root, swap, var,  
> usr, and
> home. It has been along time since I have used disklabel not since  
> I had a
> cobalt.

Just create partitions of type 4.2BSD ( that will give you ffs ),  
newfs them, mount them.
Use disklabel -i, much less hassle than the traditional editor-based  
way.

> > > I still have yet to successfully boot from a local drive.
> >
> > type 'printenv' on the OF prompt. If it outputs a longish script
> > (instead of just a list of variables )  you've got the patches you  
> > need.
>
> Yes, there is almost like shell script there now. I also ran  
> XPostFacto 4
> from OSX. It doesn't really tell you what it does, but the firmware  
> seems
> to act maybe a little bit better now.

Ok, so you have the patches installed. Once the bootloader is in  
place ( installboot takes care of that ) you can boot with something  
like 'boot ide0/@0:0 netbsd' ( that would boot from the first disk on  
the first IDE channel ). You will need to adapt that if you want to  
boot from something else - you can boot from anything OpenFirmware  
knows how to talk to.

> > > Also, I have a monitor adaptor for a PC, but when it is in open
> > > firmware
> > > the screen is totally black. Is there anyway to fix this?
> >
> > Does your monitor support sync on green? And, does the monitor just
> > display a black picture or does it go into power saving? In the
> > latter case OF probably used a video mode your monitor doesn't
> > understand. OF should default to 640x480 at 60Hz or whatever MacOS
> > used last. If your battery is bad the latter should be lost anyway
> > though.
>
> I don't think the monitor supports sync on green. It displays a black
> picture. It seems to default to 832x620 or something really odd on  
> OSX.

Does the monitor support DDC?

> The moniter will display that, but it is a little bit cut off. It  
> will not
> let me set it to 800x660 or 640x480 in OSX. I have another monitor  
> that I
> am going to try on it, but it would really be nice to get it  
> working with
> a PC monitor so that when I colo it they will be able to see what  
> is on
> the screen.

Hmm, on 2nd thought - does your monitor adaptor have switches? If it  
does they will determine what kind of monitor OpenFirmware and MacOS  
think you've got. There is a 'PC' setting which will allow OF to use  
DDC to identify the monitor but it depends on the adaptor. So, if it  
has switches play with them, it might be set to the code for a fixed  
frequency 832x620 monitor.

have fun
Michael

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