Mohan Khurana wrote:

>>From what I understand, the ofwboot* files just get the netbsd kernel file
>loaded.  As to which netbsd kernel file it loads, it was said by Henry
>Hotz that:
>
>'setenv boot-device cd:' and 'setenv boot-file netbsd.ram'
>
>will load netbsd.ram after the ofwboot.elf file is loaded.  I'm still a
>little unclear about what ofwboot.xcf does...  any idea?

The Blue&White G3 seems to come in a few different flavors which may 
explain some of the problems with booting.  I ran some tests on mine and 
here are the results.  Perhaps someone can fill in the blanks and help 
get us a bit further down the road.

The CD I created has ofwboot.elf, ofwboot.xcf and an Installatnion Kernel 
(netbsd) all placed at the root level. The CD was created in ISO9660 
format with HFS Partitions using mkhybrid (-hfs -part).  It mounts fine 
under NetBSD and MacOS and the files are all there as I expected.

Booting into OpenFirmWare (Command-Option-O-F) I see I'm running 
OpenFirmWare 3.1.1.

At the OF prompt I entered "boot cd:ofwboot.elf" and the system responds 
with a banner indicating that it is loading ELF, then displays 
"NetBSD/macppc OpenFirmWare Boot, Revision 1.1.  This is the March 15, 
2000 version.  Soon afterwards it complains that it can't open the file 
"netbsd". The exact error is: open 
/pci/@d/mac-io/ata-3@20000/disk@0/netbsd: no such file or directory.  
Then I see a "Boot:" prompt.  No idea what I need to enter at this point.

I reboot into OpenFirmWare and entered "boot cd:ofwboot.xcf" and the 
system responds with a banner indicating that it is loaded XCOFF, then 
displays "NetBSD/macppc OpenFirmWare Boot, Revision 1.2.  This is the Feb 
6, 2000 version (note the date and verision ID mismatch). Soon afterwards 
it complains about not being able to find the file "netbsd". The exact 
error is: open /pci/@d/mac-io/ata-3@20000/disk@0:0/netbsd: no such file 
or directory. Once again I see the "Boot:" prompt and still have no idea 
what I need to enter.

Reboot a third time into OpenFirmWare and entered "boot cd:netbsd" and 
the system responds by loading the NetBSD Installation Kernel from CD!  
However when it gets to the point where it reports "root on md0a" the 
system is hung.  No idea how to get past this.

One thing I have noticed is that the CD must be in the tray before 
starting the Boot process or I get some really strange errors.

In OpenFirmWare I did a "dev-alias" and noticed that the CD is reported 
on the same path as noted in the error messages above.

Are there any more tests I can run?  Can someone help fill in the blanks 
here?  What are the options one can use at the "Boot:" prompt?  Any idea 
why the file "netbsd" is found by the boot code but can't be found by 
either of the boot loaders?

thanks,
-bob