---------- Original Message -------------
Subject: Re: macppc boot process.
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 22:51:34 +0900
From: Izumi Tsutsui <tsutsui@ceres.dti.ne.jp>
To: port-macppc@netbsd.org

>> This situation does not occur when partition 1
>>is msdos, and files can be copied in and out of this partition easily.

>Well, in this case what "partition" is used on the disk?

I have not been able to try different arrangements yet. I had a hardware failure on the computer I've been using, and I could not get sysinst to properly accept an msdos partition (this is my error, and not sysinst). In the case of OpenBSD, the above is when the disk was formatted with fdisk/mbr and the msdos parition is the first one.

>>
If you want to try boot.mac instead of ofwboot,
you can just replace boot.mac with ofwboot.
(of course you have to rerun installboot(8) then)
>>

As I indicated in an earlier email, I am concerned that this approach could leave me unable to boot if the experimental bootloader fails. Wouldn't I have to have a working system to run installboot?

>>
You only can specify filename on OF prompt if the file is
placed in filesystem which can be recognized by OF,
so it works on msdosfs.
>>

I could be wrong, but isn't this true only if the file system strategy (libsa/loadfile.c->cread.c->open.c) being used is hfs? As I look at 

http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/~checkout~/src/sys/arch/macppc/stand/ofwboot/hfs.c?rev=1.2

the open method is just a wrapper for Open Firmware and uses bootpath to reference the kernel location because the file path has already been stripped. Since bootargs contains what is entered on the OF prompt, one can specify a full path that is different than where the bootloader is. In theory, if that path is not readable by OF, shouldn't ENOENT be returned and another file system strategy be tried? That is part of what I referenced when I said that some code in libsa would have to be changed to not strip the path to the kernel. This approach could lead to something as simple as having the bootloader on a msdos formatted floppy and an FFS formatted hard drive for older OF Macs.

The aforementioned hardware failure is preventing me from testing these theories, unfortunately. I hope to have that resolved soon.

tim
--