On Tue, 11 Feb 2003, Justin Hawkins wrote:

> I have been given a PowerBook G3, which I'd like to get NetBSD going
> on, as I think OSX will be too sluggish.

	They run a lot faster than you would think. If you have a Pismo, 
it's got a Rage 128 on there. You might also have the Hardware assited 
DVD playback card inside. Even the 8MB Rage Pro in the Wallstreet runs OS 
X pretty quick. It's not Quartz Extreme, but its pretty damn good for a 5 
year old machine.

> Now, the install documentation indicates that booting without a
> Macintosh filesystem on the disk may be a problem with openfirmware
> 3.0 (which I have).
> 
> I tried during the install making an MS-DOS partition, formatting it
> and copying the ofwboot.xcf and netbsd kernel files over to
> it. Indeed, at the openfirmware prompt I can see the files:
> 
> 0 > dir hd:1,\
>       57672   09-09-1902 02:28:40 OfWBOOT.XCF
>     2382865   09-09-1902 02:28:38 NETBSD
> 
> However I can't boot them:
> 
> boot hd:1,\OFWBOOT.XCF load-size=800 adler32=8ef869c3
> 
> loading XCOFF
> 
> tsize=cbc0 dsize=14a8 bsize=2670 entry=640000
> SECTIONS:
> .text   00640000  00640000  0000cbc0  000000e0
> .data   0064d000  0064d000  000014a8  0000cca0
> .bss    0064e4a8  0064e4a8  00002670  00000000
> loading .text
> 
> CLAIM failed

	If your kernel is un-gzipped, you might try just booting the 
kernel directly. OFW 3.x machines can boot ELF somewhat reliably.

> However the documentation regarding CLAIM failed is not helpful, just
> telling me to not try certain fixes under openfirmware 3. So I didn't :-)

	Not a good idea, unless you like sending your laptop back to apple 
for them to reflash the firmware.

> One thing I don't understand, is that 'dir hd:4,\' has the same effect
> as 'dir hd:1,\', as indeed does any positive integer.

	That only works for ISO9660, FAT, and Apple partition maps, if you 
blow away the whole disk and use it just for NetBSD without a partition 
map it will do a raw disk access, and the partition number won't matter. 
Older machines would complain with something like "Invalid partition 
number using 0" I think newer machines just don't warn you about it and go 
about using "partition 0" 

> cause all further tries from working.

	such is life in OpenFirmware :(

> "This has only been thoroughly tested on floppy disks, but may work on
> FDISK-formatted hard drives. This does not work for MS-DOS partitions
> on a hard drive with an Apple Partition Map."
> 
> I'm assuming I don't have an 'Apple Parition Map' since I let the
> NetBSD installer blow away the lot when it installed. Maybe I'm not
> understanding this right.

	What they are saying is that you couldn't for instance use Drive 
Setup in MacOS or the Disk Utility in OS X, and create an MS-DOS partition 
and it would work. If you don't create an apple partition map, and instead 
use fdisk (which is not included as part of the install RAMdisk kernel) 
you might be able to get something working. I do not have an OFW 3.x 
machine around to try this with unfortuantely, only parts of a Pismo that 
doesn't work.

> Am I out of luck with this configuration? Do I really need to do some
> sort of install of MacOS to get this going? If so, what's the minimum
> I need to do?

	you might try using the Startup Disk control panel on OS X CD to 
convince OpenFirmware to boot your NetBSD partition...

> I also tried reinstalling and putting my msdos partition at the end of
> the disk rather than the beginning. OFW can't see it at all now,
> though after the install process I could happily newfs, mount and copy
> files to it.

	That gets you a NetBSD disklabel, I think you need to use fdisk 
and mbrlabel to create a DOS partition map on the disk. If I have time 
I'll try what they suggest and see what I can get to work on my B&W G3.

> Slightly lost in the woods here :-)

	..."I got it, we on Pluto!" 
	"Harry, how can you tell?"
	"From the box you dummies!"

	Everything I've said is probably wrong, but I digress.