At 4:40 PM -0800 3/11/03, Jesse Peterson wrote:
>>>>Any ideas on this?
>>>
>>
>>Hmmm.  Back to basics.  This is OF 1, right?  There are bugs in 
>>some of the boot variable code which our ofwboot detects and works 
>>around. Bootpath sounds related.
>No:
>
>0 > dev /openprom .properties
>name                    openprom
>model                   Open Firmware, 2.0
>relative-addressing

OK.

>>
>>Make sure that you have boot-file, and boot-device environment 
>>variables are set to something rational, or else make sure the 
>>boot-command is set to something which includes a boot path on the 
>>boot command line.
>
>I was under the impression that partition 0 bootloadser don't 
>need/have bootfiles?

Partition 0, right.

That means that a boot loader is loaded from the boot-device.  That 
loader (bootxx with a canned list of sectors) in turn loads ofwboot 
(not .xcf, pre-linked) from the sector list into the load-base memory 
location and executes it.  ofwboot in turn loads boot-file (or 
netbsd, or /netbsd if boot-file is blank) from boot-device (or the OF 
device prefixed to the boot-file) and executes it.  Follow that?

Note that an OF device will include a partition number.  The default 
partition number (used if you said 0 for instance) is the first HFS 
partition on an Apple partitioned disk.  We're still figuring out 
what MBR partitioned disks do.  OF doesn't understand NetBSD 
partitioned disks.  (Or rather it thinks they are Apple partitioned 
disks because we have a fake APM to tell OF where the boot program 
is.  They only work on OF1 so far anyway.)

boot-file may be an option to be processed by ofwboot.  For example a 
boot-file of -a will make ofwboot ask the console for the boot-file. 
-s will make it add -s to the arguments passed to the actual boot 
file.  -e will exit back to Open Firmware.  In OF1 if you turn on 
auto-boot? then the keyboard driver is not initialized properly so -a 
will make ofwboot hang forever asking for console input that you 
can't give it.  ;-(

The environment variables can be overridden with command line 
arguments.  The IEEE standard specifies some OF variables that are 
supposed to be set based on the environment variables.  My memory is 
a touch fuzzy here, but I think on OF1 that they only get set if the 
information is provided on the command line so ofwboot has to go look 
at them manually.  (Maybe it's the other way around.)  OF2 may have 
the same or different bugs.

In any case for the kind of error you are seeing it might be worth 
trying putting the information in different places to see if it 
matters.

>Thanks for you help.

No problem.  I needed a break anyway.

>>
>>My best guess.
>>
>>>>Henry B. Hotz wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>At 7:17 PM -0800 3/10/03, Jesse Peterson wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>I can only assume that netbsd doesn't support automatically 
>>>>>>booting from this machine.  Is this true?  Somebody point me to 
>>>>>>the light!
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>Sounds like it has nothing to do with the disk spinup.  You need 
>>>>>to find out what the "soft reset" does and duplicate it.  I 
>>>>>wouldn't have a clue myself.
>>>>
>>
>
>--
>Jesse Peterson  /  jesse@pixeltechs.com


-- 
The opinions expressed in this message are mine,
not those of Caltech, JPL, NASA, or the US Government.
Henry.B.Hotz@jpl.nasa.gov, or hbhotz@oxy.edu