At 11:38 PM +0200 5/13/01, Lasse Hiller=F8e Petersen wrote:

:)Sometimes I wonder what drives me...

Because people listen and the archives are there for future users to read
through.

:)Anyway, my flirt with LinuxPPC didn't last long, so now I'm back trying to
:)get NetBSD 1.5.1_BETA(2) running on my first version iMac DV special
:)edition.

Welcome back!  BTW, could you please take a look at this TIL and let me
know whether it's one of the newer ones?  I haven't had any reports of
success or failure on the iMac (Summer 2000) or iMac (Early 2001) models.
http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n58669

:)Of course, netbsd.ram.gz didn't contain an ethernet driver, so

Yes, I filed a PR on this.  Hopefully someone can either explain why it is
commented out or will re-enable it before 1.5.1 is released.
http://www.NetBSD.org/cgi-bin/query-pr-single.pl?number=3D12892

:)The ofwboot.elf also gave me some problems, and I
:)don't understand how the install notes can CLAIM (pun intended) that OF 3
:)(which I supposedly have in my iMac) will even boot the netbsd.ram.gz
:)directly without ofwboot.elf. All I get if I try is CLAIM FAILED.

They don't claim this anymore.  The standard procedure now is to use the
boot floppy image, which seems to always work (minus gm0 drivers).

:)Now, I have three partitions
:)which I wish to use for NetBSD, partition 11 for /, 12 for /usr, and 13 fo=
r
:)swap. With disklabel they were not reported at all; it only showed HFS
:)partitions.

That depends entirely on how you created them.  If you're using Drive
Setup, you must set them to be A/UX partitions.  Then disklabel will
recognize them as non-HFS partitions.

:)seems NetBSD prefers to mount from wd0a, and gets a bit fuzzy if it can't.

That's correct.

:)I was prompted for the root partition, and typed wd0e inbetween numerous
:)messsages of timed-out interrupts or somesuch. Well, it booted. However,
:)last time I attempted using NetBSD on this machine, I didn't have that
:)problem.

Could you be more specific about those interrupt problems, such as posting
the actual message?  If there's going to be a problem in 1.5.1, we'd like
to know about it to (hopefully) fix it, or at least document it.

:)I seem to recall reading somewhere about the significance NetBSD puts into
:)partition types and names, so I just tried to rename and retype the
:)partitions to their canonical values: Apple_UNIX_SVR2 "A/UX Root" (or
:)should that be "A/UX Root slice 0"???), A/UX Usr and A/UX Swap, without
:)luck so far.

Ugh, pdisk is totally the wrong tool.  However, if you don't want to use
Drive Setup, then there are posts to this mailing list describing how to
use it.  See http://mail-index.netbsd.org and search for pdisk.

:)I don't want to be a NetBSD developer, I just want to be a
:)(happy) user.

If you'd just wait a few weeks until 1.5.1 is released, I'll have better
documentation in place.  This is one of the reasons it's called "BETA" and
not "RELEASE".  I intend to write a HOW-TO on using Drive Setup by then.

:)It seems to me that a lot of work is being put into making NetBSD-macppc
:)work "the same" for all kinds of machines; and unifying also the
:)installation guide etc. I wonder if it wouldn't be better to divide this
:)into "variations", [...]

AAAARRRRGGGGHH!  Please read the threads on this group.  I will *NOT* go
back into this discussion.  The decision has been made, I have *very*
limited time to work on documenting macppc, and 1.5.1 is being frozen very
soon.

If you wish to devote effort to improving macppc, please stop saying the
same thing everyone elas has been saying.  I'm working on it -- just wait,
or offer to help.

  -- MW