Subject: Re: partition path
To: None <ruben2@mac.com>
From: Michael Wolfson <mw@blobulent.com>
List: port-macppc
Date: 12/29/2001 10:54:07
At 1:00 PM +0100 12/29/01, ruben2@mac.com wrote:

:)I'm trying to implement NetBDSD on my G4 tower 450. I've made 4
:)partitions on my disk, using the disk utility under OS10.1.  The first 3
:)HFS+ partitions are dedicated to OSX and OS9 . The last one is UFS and
:)I've put ofwboot.xcf and netbsd.GENERIC.gz on it as well as a folder
:)containing the NetBDSD sets.

UFS is not supported by a) Open Firmware, b) MacOS 9 and earlier, and c)
NetBSD.  Please tell me where you got the impression you had to use an UFS
partition so I can correct the documentation.

Since you have an Open Firmware 3 system, you *must* place ofwboot.xcf on
either an HFS, HFS+, MS-DOS, NFS, or ISO9660 filesystem.  You *must* place
the distribution sets on either an FFS (NetBSD native filesystem), ISO
9660, NFS, or MS-DOS filesystem.  Please tell me where this was unclear so
I can correct the documentation.

:)I have boot under Open Firmware but could not identify the addresses of
:)my different partitions.  I thought I would be able to move through the
:)tree using 'dev aliasname' and then get a list of the contents of my
:)disks using 'dir'. But 'dir' only accepts to list the contents of my OS9
:)partition (which is not called 'hd')  using 'dir hd:,\'.

dir can only list the contents of partitions which Open Firmware supports.
These formats are HFS, HFS+, and ISO 9660.  I just wrote up a new FAQ entry
on using dir:

http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/faq.html#ofw-dir-listing

In any case, using 'dir hd:,\' will list the contents of the first
partition that Open Firmware can deal with.  I suspect that in your case
(since you used Drive Setup), it is partition number 9 and 'dir hd:,\'
would be identical to 'dir hd:9,\'.

:)- when I'll have installed NetBSD: shall I have to boot always through
:)Open Firmware in order to choose the environment ?

Yes.  Use nvalias to make shortcuts though.

  -- MW