Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2010 15:05:48 -0500 From: Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@freebsd.org> To: freebsd-ppc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Booting FreeBSD/powerpc from external FireWire drive? Message-ID: <20101001150548.6a652cba@anacreon.physics.wisc.edu> In-Reply-To: <40D5CC15-8828-4CFD-AE13-2211B9742AE2@gromit.dlib.vt.edu> References: <40D5CC15-8828-4CFD-AE13-2211B9742AE2@gromit.dlib.vt.edu>
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On Fri, 1 Oct 2010 11:44:05 -0400
Paul Mather <paul@gromit.dlib.vt.edu> wrote:
> I'm trying to install FreeBSD/powerpc{,64} on an external FireWire
> drive. I've been successful in installing a 9-CURRENT snapshot. The
> problem is that I don't know how to boot from this drive from
> OpenFirmware, given I also have Mac OS X installed on a separate hard
> drive---the internal hard drive that is the default boot drive.
>
> Using a PowerBook G4, I was able to boot the external FW drive
> containing FreeBSD by holding down the Option key during startup and
> then choosing the FreeBSD drive from the list of bootable drives that
> is displayed. Unfortunately, I want to use this external FW drive to
> boot into FreeBSD on an headless Xserve G5 via a serial console.
> Lacking the graphical boot drive chooser, I need to use the
> OpenFirmware "boot" command or set the boot-device in NVRAM to
> designate the external FW drive as the boot drive.
>
> Can anyone help me figure out the appropriate OpenFirmware command to
> boot FreeBSD from the external FW drive? The "devalias" command
> reports I have "fw" and "fwx" aliases, which I presume refer to
> FireWire. Alas, I can't fathom what the boot command arguments would
> be. I followed the gpart partitioning scheme listed in the
> FreeBSD/powerpc install instructions at
> http://people.freebsd.org/~nwhitehorn/ppcinstall.txt with an 800K
> apple-boot partition as the first one in the APM.
>
> If it would make it easier, the external FW drive I have can also be
> used as a USB drive. So, if it is easier to boot from an external
> USB, I could do that, if someone can tell me the appropriate boot
> arguments.
boot fw:,\\:tbxi or boot fw:,\ppc\boot1.elf might also work.
-Nathan
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