Hello:
While I am not a current NETBSD user (yet) I have been watching the
mailing list. I actually used USB to install linux on my system, and a
lot of the process is probably the same. To boot from USB, you need
1. A drive with an Apple partition map (otherwise openfirmware might
have trouble finding things.)
2. An flash drive with two partitions: HFS and another, maybe like FFS
which the netbsd kernel can mount and execute on (not HFS+ that isn't
well supported on netbsd I don't think).
3. ofwboot.xcf and a netbsd kernel in the hfs partition. They need to
be together.
4. Put the netbsd userland (software) from the Install iso into the
other partition (other than the kernel/bootloader).
5. With this all together, use devalias to find the usb devices. Then
use 'dir usb<n>/disk@1:<p>' in order to determine drive contents, where
<n> is the usb number from devalias and <p> is the partition number.
Remember the apple partition map is actually a partition so the number
will be at least 2.
6. Once you find the files (lets say they are on usb1/disk@1:2 AND
assuming that the kernel/bootloader are in the root directory), you
would type 'boot usb1/disk@1:2,\ofwboot.xcf usb1/disk@1:2,\netbsd'
where the first argument of boot is the file location of the
bootloader, and the second argument is the location of the kernel. I
remember having to type the whole path for both arguments.
7. From there, with any luck the kernel loaded. If I remember right,
you should be able to run the installer from there, or at least mount
filesystems. You are on your own for that part.
Over time as I become more knowledgeable I may try to build a usb
installer for macppc port.
Sincerely,
Raven King
On Sat, 2019-12-21 at 12:23 -0500, Michael wrote:
Hello,
On Fri, 20 Dec 2019 22:50:26 -0500
halian%safiria.net@localhost wrote:
> I'm trying to boot 8.1 from a USB drive on my iBook G3 Dual USB
> (model
> ID `PowerBook4,1`), and I get the following error when trying to
> boot to
> it:
>
> 0> boot usb0:,\ofwboot.xcf netbsd.macppc method <load> not
> found,
> ihandle=ffbc5ac0 phandle=ff960fd0 load-size=0 adler32=1
That's OpenFirmware complaining that it can't 'load' from whatever
usb0
points at.
> What, if anything, am I doing wrong? or is it simply not possible
> to
> boot from a USB stick even via trickery?
I never tried it, but I wouldn't be too surprised if it's possible.
That said, what does the usb0 devalias actually point at? You need
something that points at the actual drive, not just the USB
controller.
I'm not sure if OF will create device nodes for USB mass storage
devices, if it doesn't then we're out of luck. If it does then it
likely doesn't support hotplugging so your drive needs to be inserted
at power up.
have fun
Michael