Is there any particular reason you're hell-bent on using ofwboot.xcf?

A copy of boot.fs, dd'ed (or whatever) to a floppy, can be booted on
every OF 1.0.5 machine where I've tried (a 7500, two 7600s, and a
7300 just in the last week) with a simple:

ok> boot fd:0

Once booted, install is as usual (though you may have to ifconfig and
route add by hand), and I've had no troubles using installboot as
stated in the FAQ and then booting from the hard drive. I don't know
anything about munging HFS partition maps, though I haven't tried to
use the same disk for MacOS and NetBSD (largely because the swarm of
OF 1.0.5 machines I've got are for a cluster computing project in
which we don't want MacOS at all).

       ~ g r @ eclipsed.net

On Thu, Jun 15, 2000 at 08:55:20AM -0700, Henry B. Hotz wrote:
> First the constructive correction to the FAQ (is the right person 
> listening?).  To boot from a DOS floppy you need to specify partition 
> number 1 as in
> 
> boot fd:1,ofwboot.xcf
> 
> It may not be needed for OF >= 2, but it is for OF 1.0.5 on my test 
> machine.  Of course it then says that the file is in an invalid 
> format so I assume I have a binary/ascii transfer problem somewhere 
> as well.
> 
> Second the generic plea for help.  Is it really true that you can't 
> get OF to boot a file from a HFS partition?  I certainly haven't 
> gotten anywhere trying, but I thought that should be possible.
> 
> Is it really true that bootxx conflicts with the Apple Partition Map? 
> You can't have boot blocks understood by OF and an APM on the same 
> disk?
> 
> Given the above two problems, how would one set up an OF 1.0.5 
> machine to boot into NetBSD?  I suppose I can create a boot CD-ROM 
> and set up some options so that ofwboot.xcf will cross-boot from the 
> hard disk.  Even if I can solve the auto-eject problem a floppy is 
> just too damn slow for normal use.
> 
> Any documentation on ofwboot anywhere?  I think it takes some command 
> line options, but I'm not sure where to look.
> 
> Signature failed Preliminary Design Review.
> Feasibility of a new signature is currently being evaluated.
> h.b.hotz@jpl.nasa.gov, or hbhotz@oxy.edu