Re: Netbooting a blue and white G3

[Andy Ruhl <acruhl%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 2:46 PM, Michael <macallan%netbsd.org@localhost> wrote:
> You will need some way to apply firmware patches ( without the damn thing
> won't even look at your disks ) - the easiest way is to boot an OSX install
> disk ( anything up to 10.4 should work. The installer will bitch at some
> point but we don't care - at that point the patches are in place )
> Since you have OF before 3 you'll need to use the partition zero method,
> otherwise things should Just Work.

When I boot to the firmware, the machine says "Open Firmware 3.1.1". I
assume this is OK?

I'm having a hard time trying to get the thing to boot from a disk. I
put in a new 200 gig disk, then netbooted an install kernel and
installed onto it. I took all the defaults. I used the entire disk and
/ takes up the whole disk, other than 2048 meg for a swap partition.

When I reboot into the firmware, then try a whole lot of boot commands
(I've been reading the FAQ, the install document, even OpenBSD docs),
nothing works. I can't get it to boot from the disk.

I only have a single IDE 200 gig disk in it. NetBSD recognizes it and
uses it fine when I netboot the OS from my other box.

I'm sure I'm missing something. Maybe the bootloader didn't get put on
the disk right? I've noticed that I get this type of error a lot from
the firmware:

"Can't find partition" or "Can't find default partition"

Also, another thing that is quite annoying is the font size once the
kernel loads "wsdisplay0" when I'm netbooting the OS. The font size is
fine, the same as the firmware size up until then. Once it hits
"wsdisplay0" in the boot messages, the font size is increased about 10
times and I get this huge font. I'm trying to figure out how to change
it with wsconsctl but so far I haven't had much luck.

I might try installing OpenBSD even though I'm not a huge fan of it.

Andy