Re: Booting without ofwboot

[Chuck Silvers <chuq%chuq.com@localhost>]

On Sat, Oct 23, 2004 at 12:18:33PM +0200, Jorge Acereda wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I want to try NetBSD/ofppc on a Pegasos board. I tried to boot it
> directly, but it hangs without showing any message. ofwboot seems to
> work, but I can't see any way to use it to boot the kernel (no UFS
> partitions or floppy disk on this machine). My questions:
> 
> - Why is ofwboot needed at all?

the ofppc port was originally written for FirePower boxes, and the
OF implementation there only understands fdisk labels and FAT file systems.
ofwboot understands BSD disklabels and FFS file systems, which makes it
easier to update kernels.  normally you never need to mount the FAT fs
where ofwboot lives.  ofwboot wasn't really required even for these boxes,
it was just an added convenience.


> - Has anyone patches to boot directly from OF?

the problem you saw with booting isn't because you didn't use ofwboot,
it's because the ofppc port is busted in general.  at least, that was
true the last time I tried to boot -current on my FirePower box
(maybe 6 months ago).

-Chuck