Re: Netbooting a blue and white G3

[Michael <macallan%netbsd.org@localhost>]

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Hello,

On Oct 16, 2009, at 3:47 PM, Nathan Whitehorn wrote:

> Flavio Donadio wrote:
> > Nathan,
> >
> >
> > Well... Since I am a "mere mortal" NetBSD user, I was pretty sure  
> > somebody already had the same idea or maybe a better one! :-)
> >
> > I was thinking about the technique and I have to ask: you don't  
> > really have to format the partition as HFS before doing a block  
> > write of an image file to it, huh? If so, you don't even have to  
> > "prepare" the partition before starting from the CD.
> I'm not completely sure I understand the question, but I'll try.  
> This generates a raw HFS image (boot1.hfs) that you can dd to an  
> 800K partition you make with pdisk, so there is no preparation  
> necessary with other operating systems or hfsutils or anything else.  
> In principle, the installer can just block copy it to a partition  
> like it would a boot block. The idea is that it can work like the  
> boot block does on x86 or sparc, installing some stub loader you  
> never really need to update that loads the real loader from UFS --  
> the boot block internally just happening to be a small HFS filesystem.

We actually do that on hp300 - the 'bootblock' is a rudimentary LIF  
filesystem with just enough information to let the boot PROM load the  
loader ( LIF has a 'this is a bootable operating system file' file  
attribute ) which then in turn loads the kernel. It doesn't even live  
in its own partition - it's using free space in the first few blocks  
of an ffs filesystem. Last time I checked the whole thing was about  
55kB.

have fun
Michael

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