>On Mon, 25 Oct 1999, Donald Lee wrote:
>
>> Beige G3/266 w/ Open Firmware 2.4:
>> 
>> I can still run this machine with a borrowed "old" ROM, but it
>> struck me that I should be ablr to boot from a kernel on the IDE disk!
>
>Kinda. I'm not sure to what extent our kernel wants to be loaded by
>ofwboot. I'm sure I'll get told as a result of this posting. ;-)
>
>> I've now tried booting with the kernel on the IDE disk, and I get some
>> strange results.
>> 
>> What I get that's closest to working is:
>> 
>> 	boot /pci/mac-io/ide/disk@0:2,\netbsd
>> 
>> This gives me a hang.  Variations on this give me non-bootable partition,
>> missing file name, etc.
>> 
>> Should I be able to do this?  The netbsd kernel (called "netbsd" is on the
>> root level of the ide disk.)  The partition number does not seem to matter
>> as long as the partition number > 1.
>
>Actually no. That kernel is an ELF file, while your OFW will only boot an
>XCOFF file.
>
>I'm working on improving our ability to generate XCOFF files, so that we
>can generate an ofwboot.xcoff, and you could use that to boot the NetBSD
>kernel.

OK.  I'm still a bit in the dark about the details of how the boot process
works, but I tried the same file with the same procedure on my B&W G3 and
it came right up.

	boot hd:5,\netbsd

gave me the mem-filesystem and the "sysinst" stuff, just like I get
when I boot the floppy.

Does OF 3.0 know about ELF, and OF 2.4 only XCOFF?

The OF 2.4 is clearly broken in at least some ways.  For instance, it has
devalias entries for ide, ata-int, and ide1, but when I try to use them,
it complains.  Other devalias's work, like "fd".

What I'd *like* is to be able to boot using the ROM that is supposed to
be in the machine.

I'm still planning on digging in and fixing ofwboot to work on this machine
if I get a free weekend or two...

Thanks,

-dgl-