Re: Notes from installing on a G4 Mac Mini

[Amitai Schlair <schmonz%schmonz.com@localhost>]

Another method that may or may not be slightly easier to set up and
maintain: a small ISO9660 filesystem rather than an HFS. I did this on
my PowerPC mini. I found the idea here:

http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-macppc/2001/09/02/0002.html

And here are my notes from the 3.x era:

1. From another Unix machine, create a small ISO9660 filesystem
containing the bootloader:

mkisofs -r -apple -o boot.iso ofwboot.xcf

2. Get to an Open Firmware prompt, then boot the NetBSD 3.0 install CD:

boot cd:,\ofwboot.xcf netbsd.macppc

3. Escape to a shell and copy boot.iso onto the Mac somehow (I newfs‘d
a bit of disk and scp‘d it there).

4. Write it to the internal IDE disk:

dd if=boot.iso of=/dev/wd0c

5. Go back to sysinst and install NetBSD.

6. When writing the disklabel, create a 1MB h partition starting at
the beginning of the disk, then adjust the a partition to start after
h.

7. Point Open Firmware at the bootloader:

setenv boot-command " screen" output boot
setenv boot-device hd:OFWBOOT.XCF;1
setenv auto-boot? true
reset-all

8. Later, if you need to update the bootloader, run mkisofs over the
new ofwboot.xcf, then run the same dd command as before, adding the
arguments skip=32 seek=32 (this should avoid scribbling over your
disklabel).

Thanks to matt and uwe for their help.