Re: Netbooting a blue and white G3

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

On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 10:55 AM, Michael <macallan%netbsd.org@localhost> wrote:
>> For my purposes, I can add a new disk to the machine (200 gig IDE),
>> but when I do it the thing no longer boots. I get the folder with a
>> question mark. I need to make sure I'm putting the slave disk in there
>> correctly though. If I can fix that problem, then this method seems
>> like a good idea.
>
> That can be a challenge, many macs, especially pre-G4 models, are very
> finicky about that. Some combinations will only work with cable select, some
> only with master / slave set, some disks don't like each other - it took me
> a while to get my beige G3 to boot with two disks on the 1st IDE channel.
>
>> Question: You said "Create the NetBSD partitions with OSX..." then
>> "Change the partition types to UNIX whatever..." Is this done with
>> disklabel or pdisk? I'm hoping I can just figure this out myself.
>
> I meant pdisk - OSX and OF don't see the NetBSD disklabel.
>
>> I have booted NetBSD on a whole lot of different machine types, so far
>> this has been the most difficult one that I can remember that is
>> claimed to be supported. It doesn't seem like it needs to be.
>
> In part you can thank Apple for that - each OF version has its own set of
> bugs and weirdnesses, the ones used in PMac G3 models are by far the worst

Flavio and Michael, thanks for the info. This is good. I have a
feeling my machine is going to give me a few problems trying to use 2
disks on the same controller, but I'll try that again later.

I'm really focused on trying to get the thing to be able to boot from
the hard drive by only using stuff available from the install CD.

The stuff that Uwe said earlier (which I remember from a long time
ago) makes it seem like it should be possible, after all, all they are
doing is putting an iso filesystem on the front of the disk and then
loading the bootloader from there. If OpenBSD can create an MSDOS
filesystem at the front of the disk and load a bootloader from it, and
then have it load the kernel from the / disk, we should be able to do
it too. Also, they are using the mkisofs command, and I think this has
been gone for a while and I don't remember which tool replaced it,
maybe makefs?

I've been trying various stuff and the firmware seems to be very picky
about it so far, but I'm not done yet. I'm probably missing something
really simple between fdisk and disklabel when at the # prompt in the
installer CD. So far I'm not able to get disklabel to label the disk
after I do fdisk to create the MSDOS partition (id 6) and the NetBSD
partition (id 169). It complains about some stuff.

More later.

Andy