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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
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