Re: Boot code of linuxppc v. netbsd

[Dan Jacobowitz <youngdrow%geocities.com@localhost>]

At 12:07 AM -0400 1/8/98, Stephen Ma wrote:
>>>>>> "Dan" == Dan Jacobowitz <youngdrow%geocities.com@localhost> writes:
>
>Dan> So, what shall we do?  Grab them back from OpenBSD and be merry?
>
>Ummm... Probably the best thing to do, at least for hack-coff, is to
>fix up the xcoff support in bfd to fill in the missing a.out header
>fields correctly. As for ld.script, it's a trivial thing to rewrite.

Trivial perhaps - though is that a volunteer I smell?  I'll use it as-is
until someone provides an alternative.  Ditto for the bfd - which is quite
buggy, actually; try objdumping an xcoff sometime.  Always core dumps for
me.

BTW, isn't the cross-compiler supposed to define __powerpc__ ?  It doesn't
seem to be, to me....

>Dan> Exactly, on a 7300.  What I get is a total inability to FIND the
>Dan> kernel - someone on another kind of powerpc, please describe how
>Dan> you do this.  If I leave it on a floppy I can't get the boot
>Dan> loader to open it; do I need to have a partition first
>Dan> recognizable by Open Firmware?  Plus, OF seems to be munging the
>Dan> string gets() returns QUITE badly.
>
>Ummm... Where exactly did you put the kernel? And what boot path did
>you specify?

The kernel was on the floppy.  Boot path fd:netbsd.  However, OF seemed to
be destroying that somehow.

>As far as I can tell, ofwboot can only boot kernels from ufs or cd9660
>filesystems. These filesystems can be in disklabelled partitions, or
>on a disklabelled raw disk. I think it only understands MS-DOS style
>partioning.


Here's the thing:

It uses OF_open, so it should (SHOULD) be able to boot from any disk OF
supports.  On the Mac as far as I know that means only HFS.  I'll look at
how linuxppc installs a boot loader into sd@0,0 soon.  For some reason it
claims the floppy drive is "not configured" - go figure.


Meanwhile, I am going to try appending the kernel to the OF loader as
coffboot does - I think I see how to do this... and it's a good interim
solution so I can get a system up.
Pity we can't use the (highly gpled) zlib for compressed kernels - it's
SOOO much smaller and nicer on my poor modem and floppy drive :)

Dan


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| Dan Jacobowitz                 | drow%drow.net@localhost                    |
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