Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2011 17:40:18 -0400 From: Super Bisquit <superbisquit@gmail.com> To: dieterbsd@engineer.com Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: multi-boot bootstrap? Message-ID: <AANLkTik=4hC2qAOBiAynaHsg%2B%2Bk4iN8O=tVeP2ZdXUOK@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <8CDBBA235B59E56-11D4-42F9@web-mmc-d02.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CDBBA235B59E56-11D4-42F9@web-mmc-d02.sysops.aol.com>
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On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 4:59 PM, <dieterbsd@engineer.com> wrote: > Now, how are you going to multiboot OpenBSD and NetBSD on a PowerPC >> > machine > >> from the same hard disk. >> > > I didn't say anything about a requirement for booting multiple OSes from the same disk. I said: Go through all the disks and look >> for bootable partitions. Extract the GPT partition labels for >> these partitions. Present a menu of choices. >> > Not that easy. > There can be multiple disks. (Assuming the hardware supports that.) > Openfirmware isn't BIOS. > I haven't worked with PowerPC machines and it has been a very long time > since I worked with Sparc. OpenFirmware is based on OpenBoot and both require forth programming. I had to reference Gentoo documentation because none of the hackers knew or knows how to change devices. By the way, SILO is the only Bootloader I know of that can multiboot on a sparc box. Linux emulation for sparc doesn't exist on freebsd, you'll be working on that yourself. > I'm more familiar with Alpha, which would take > some hacking to boot more than one OS per disk, but some rocket scientist > decided to drop FreeBSD support for Alpha, so I suspect that no one here > cares about Alpha. FreeBSD alpha needs to follow debian alpha: become a self sustaining project. > > > From what I know, one or the other can only be as >> the first entry and it then has to be set from the forth prompt. >> So, you will need two disks to boot , saya: OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, >> > Linux, > >> and MacOSX or a combination of these. >> >> On PPC boxes with OpenFirmware 3.x, you actually need to set the >> > active > >> partition if you want to boot Linux and/or freebsd from the forth >> > prompt if > >> both are on the same disk. >> > > Can these PPC boxes boot from GPT disks? "active partition" sounds MBRish. > Perhaps they can use the "protective MBR" trick? Sorry, doesn't work like that. Linux does yaboot. FreeBSD does the bootloader Whitehorn wrote for it. OpenBSD either takes up the whole disk or you need to do a lot of hacking. NetBSD requires exact command lines to boot. Active partition on a ppc machine means that which you will boot from after the kernel is loaded. It boots from an hfs partition on which the bootloader has been dd'ed to. If you have more than one installation, you need need to set which ufs partiton is the active one by specifying on the command line. > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-hackers-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" > You're setup will be as such for a ppc machine: 1) Your bootloader on an hfs partition has to be the very first entry on each disk which is attached. 2) It will need to load Whitehorn's bootloader by using forth commands from the console. 3) Whitehorn's bootloader will need to be set from your bootloader to choose which ufs2 partition will load- in the event someone has more than one install. 4) Whitehorn's bootloader will need to be paused to allow module loading, single boot or an alternative kernel from the selected install. 5) This will need to be done for every boot. There are no slices on a ppc machine. There are partitions only.
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