Henry B. Hotz  (hotz@jpl.nasa.gov) wrote:

>At 4:02 PM -0800 2/23/00, Bob Nestor wrote:
>>Dan Winship  (danw@helixcode.com) wrote:
>>>There's no MacOS tool currently in existence that will let you set up
>>>the disk to be NetBSD-bootable.
>>
>>I think this is true, but we're not far from being able to do this.  The
>
>I must be missing something here.  What do we need?  We can load
>ofwboot.xcf directly from an HFS partition in OF.  We can use all the
>mac68k and MacOS tools to create the partitions in the first place.
>
True, but none of the mac68k programs knows how to put a bootstrap on the 
disk since NetBSD/mac68k is always booted via the Booter application.  
The macppc port does this (I think) when the disk is dedicated to NetBSD. 
 This would have to be updated to place the bootstrap or a bootstrap 
process in the proper places on the disk if it contained a mix of HFS 
partitions and NetBSD ones.  Isn't this needed for the macppc port since 
we don't have something like the Booter application?  I may be wrong, but 
I thought we'd either need to have ofwboot.* on an small HFS partition on 
the disk or we'd have some type of bootcode on the disk that would take 
us right into NetBSD from a hardware reset.

>Does ofwboot.xcf not understand Apple Partition Maps?  Does it not look in
>the right place (TM) for /netbsd when loaded?  Both of these problems would
>seem to be easy to fix.
>
I don't know what ofwboot.* supports, but I would think it shouldn't be 
to difficult to teach it the things it needs to know in dealing with a 
mixed format disk.  Obviously once we get booted the -current kernels 
know how to deal with the Apple Disk Partition Map thanks to the work 
done by Bill and others.

>Is the problem with the old-version ffs code in the installer?
>
I don't believe this is a problem at all.  The MacOS Installer and Mkfs 
applications aren't even required any longer if we use the sysinst 
method.  It's capable of partitioning a formatted disk or one already in 
use by MacOS and setting up NetBSD compatible partitions. I know that's 
why I haven't been to keen on continuing to support the Mkfs program, and 
I suspect it's the same with Steven Brown on the Installer.  The only 
thing we can't do with sysinst/mac68k is boot into NetBSD.  Hopefully by 
the time 1.5 is released the only remaining MacOS application we'll still 
need is the Booter.

>Signed, Confused ;-)

Did that help, or am I the confused one?

-bob