Re: Dualboot Mac OS X and NetBSD on Power Mac?

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

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Hello,

On Apr 27, 2010, at 6:01 PM, Dennis Ferguson wrote:

> On 27 Apr 2010, at 13:10 , Chris Ross wrote:
>
> > On Apr 27, 2010, at 15:27, Michael wrote:
> > > On Apr 27, 2010, at 2:58 PM, Chris Ross wrote:
> > > > I have a quad-core Power Mac G5 that I'm thinking about pushing  
> > > > into a server-class machine in the closet at some point over the  
> > > > next year.  But, for now, it's still my primary desktop machine.   
> > > > So, I have two main questions:
> > > >
> > > > 1) Does NetBSD/macppc run (well?) on this hardware?
> > >
> > > No.
> >
> > Okay.  Well, then that's clearly more important to address  
> > first.  :-)
> >
> > What doesn't work well?  Does it work at all?
>
> It worked at one point but the code seems to be bit-rotted; I had to
> fix problems in two files just to get a G5 kernel to compile.  I  
> managed to
> get to an ofwboot prompt, but it kept complaining about an  
> (unspecified)
> I/O error trying to read the kernel off the HFS disk.  I left it at  
> that
> point; I'll next try to boot it diskless when I have some time to  
> spend
> on it.

Actually it gets much further - it hangs when enabling the MMU and so  
far I couldn't figure out why. Also, there's conflicting information  
out there about BATs being emulated in bridge mode ( most docs say  
nothing or no yet OpenBSD happily uses them anyway )
Also, there is no support for the PCIe bridge in last generation G5s.

> > I'm not concerned about 64-bit support, as
> > I only have 3 GB of memory and would be using this as a storage  
> > server if not more than a compute server.  I saw something in  
> > mailing lists about the SATA controller not being supported?  Is  
> > that the/a core issue?
>
> I really want a 64 bit kernel for this machine; I have a small  
> collection
> of G5's and a project that gets significant benefit from 64 bit  
> loads.  That,
> however, requires a big block of time to work on.

PPC64 support keeps creeping in but there's still a hell of a lot of  
work left.

> A 32 bit kernel, however, seems like it shouldn't be that  
> difficult.  This
> did work at one point, the only problem is that point was about 5  
> years ago
> and the rest of the kernel has moved on while that code has  
> apparently sat
> still.  It needs someone to work through its problems to revive it.

Apparently it didn't really use bridge mode anyway - just ran a 64bit  
kernel being really, really careful about staying within 4GB.

> > Is there any work being done on getting this hardware [fully]  
> > supported in the macppc NetBSD port?
>
> I don't think anyone could be running this code at all (in a recent  
> kernel)
> since if they were I'd expect not to get compilation errors when  
> trying
> to build a -current kernel.  I don't know about missing hardware  
> support
> (I can't see any indication that the G5's disk controller is missing  
> support,
> for what that's worth), but its current problems are more  
> fundamental than
> that in any case.

You can compile a 32bit G5 kernel ( or at lease I could not too long  
ago ) - they don't reach userland however. 'Real' 64bit kernel hit an  
#error elsewhere, somewhere in OF support IIRC. Otherwise, we have a  
more or less generic SATA driver, no clue if that's enough for the G5.

have fun
Michael

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