---------- Original Message -------------
Subject: Re: macppc boot process.
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 21:34:43 +0900
From: Izumi Tsutsui <tsutsui@ceres.dti.ne.jp>
To: port-macppc@netbsd.org
>>
I heard FreeBSD has HFS support, but I don't know the details.
Of course once we have the HFS support (in kernel and newfs_hfs),
we no longer should have the "boot from MS-DOS partition" method.
>>

http://ftp.penguinppc.org/projects/hfsplus/ is in the packages tree of OpenBSD. It's read-only, but it does work and does HFS+.

I would argue that the "boot from msdos partition" method is very important. From what I can tell, using partition 0/bootxx requires that only one bootloader be installed. As part of my work on getting OpenBSD working on Old World Macs, I added dynamic L2 cache configuration and tftp loading of RAMDISK images to their bootloader. Since I am now evaluating NetBSD, I'd like to test the bootloader in GENERIC (as I know it already works with 1.5.3 and 1.6.2 INSTALL). However, if I make a change that causes failure, it seems to me I will unable to simply change my boot arguments in Open Firmware to use the stock bootloader because installboot places one and only one bootloader. 

I've also noticed that msdos partitions will show in OS X, even if they don't show in MacOS 9. This leads to a possible way to move files between partitions (albeit with rebooting between OSes).

tim
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