BACKGROUND:
ok, i got a blue, 400mhz, slot loading CD-ROM iMac with firewire ports. 
i am installing release 1.5.3. to refresh your memory, this is an 
openfirmware 3 machine, which the docs and my trying have said will not 
boot using the "partition 0" bootloader and MUST load ofwboot.xcf using 
openfirmware to boot. going through the normal installation procedure 
will yeild a flashing system folder icon when you reboot after the 
installation procedure says, "you can now reboot your mac in netbsd". in 
this form, as i understand, there is no longer anything on the hard 
drive that openfirmware 3 can boot into. you would need to load the 
bootloader off of a cd or netboot server or something, right?

well anyways, the docs gave me some instructions to get netbsd installed 
on a disk shared with HFS or HFS+, for either sharing the disk with 
MacOS, or for the purposes of having a small HFS partition to put the 
ofwboot.xcf bootloader on which the docs indicate is the only way to 
make a OFW3 machine boot unassisted by a cd or server (short of another 
hard drive) nothing i tried in the docs worked to do this. things the 
docs said would work just simply didnt. (the docs say partition and 
format the disk using drive setup, making a HFS parition along with a 
AUX root, AUX swap, AUX user, and AUX free. i do this an the installer 
refuses to install into the disk unless i let the installer reformat it 
the way it wants to, which of course destroys the HFS partition. i tried 
about a hundred slight variations and used both os 9's drive setup and 
os x's disk utility) well anyways i fudged with it for a while and got 
it installed onto the disk. if anyone is having the same trouble 
installing onto a disk they want to share with HFS, for either reason, 
drop me a line and i'll give you my detailed instructions. i hope i hear 
from someone because i was beginning to think i was crazy when it 
wouldnt install sets when the docs said it should.

MY QUESTION:
anyways, i got it all installed now, netbsd using all but 8 megs of the 
disk, and a 8 mb HFS partition with ofwboot.xcf on it. HOWEVER, 
openfirmware is now just drving me insane. basically i have been trying 
everything i can think of to get the machine to boot unattended but for 
the life of me i cannot. after installation, using clean default OF 
settings, i boot using:

boot hd:,\ofwboot.xcf

just fine. the ofwboot bootloader comes up, finds the root partition 
right away with ease and loads up my kernel, netbsd, and boots. so now i 
changed the boot-device OFW variable to "hd:,\ofwboot.xcf" so now i can 
boot the same by typing just:

boot

at the OFW prompt. this now works fine since i used "setenv boot-device 
hd:,\ofwboot.xcf" and "reset-all" previously. i then changed the 
variable called "boot-command" from the default value of "mac-boot" to 
"boot". however, when auto-boot? is true the mac just sits there with a 
white screen. when auto-boot? is false the machine powers on the open 
firmware prompt and i type "boot" and it boots just fine. if the 
boot-command is "boot" shouldnt auto-boot? = true yeild identical 
results as going to the ofw prompt and typing "boot". that would make 
sense but it doesnt seem to work for me. i have tried it with the boot 
command being "boot", "mac-boot", "boot hd:,\ofwboot.xcf" and none work, 
but just typing "boot" at the ofw prompt always boots fine, WHAT GIVES?

any insight would but MUCH appreciated!