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Date:      Mon, 4 Oct 2010 16:55:44 -0400
From:      Paul Mather <paul@gromit.dlib.vt.edu>
To:        freebsd-ppc@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Booting FreeBSD/powerpc from external FireWire drive?
Message-ID:  <5F44B27D-0A14-4F59-8EA2-2D52ADC4C79D@gromit.dlib.vt.edu>
In-Reply-To: <20101001150548.6a652cba@anacreon.physics.wisc.edu>
References:  <40D5CC15-8828-4CFD-AE13-2211B9742AE2@gromit.dlib.vt.edu> <20101001150548.6a652cba@anacreon.physics.wisc.edu>

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On Oct 1, 2010, at 4:05 PM, Nathan Whitehorn wrote:

> On Fri, 1 Oct 2010 11:44:05 -0400
> Paul Mather <paul@gromit.dlib.vt.edu> wrote:
>=20
>> 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.
>>=20
>> 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.
>>=20
>> 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.
>>=20
>> 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.
>=20
> boot fw:,\\:tbxi or boot fw:,\ppc\boot1.elf might also work.

Neither of these works for me.  In both cases I get the following =
output:

load-size=3D0 adler32=3D1

LOAD-SIZE is too small
 ok
0 >

I can boot via the graphical boot disk chooser (hold down Option key =
when powering on, then select external FW drive with FreeBSD installed). =
 These are the drive partitions I see when booted into FreeBSD:

powerpc# gpart show
=3D>       5  78140155  ad0  APM  (37G)
         5    262203       - free -  (128M)
    262208  77877936    2  !Apple_HFS  (37G)
  78140144        16       - free -  (8.0K)

=3D>       18  585938926  da0  APM  (279G)
         18       1600    1  !Apple_Bootstrap  (800K)
       1618    2097152    2  freebsd-ufs  (1.0G)
    2098770   12582912    3  freebsd-swap  (6.0G)
   14681682   33554432    4  freebsd-ufs  (16G)
   48236114    4194304    5  freebsd-ufs  (2.0G)
   52430418    2097152    6  freebsd-ufs  (1.0G)
   54527570   16777216    7  freebsd-ufs  (8.0G)
   71304786  514634158    8  freebsd-ufs  (245G)

powerpc# df -h
Filesystem    Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/da0s3    989M    158M    753M    17%    /
devfs         1.0K    1.0K      0B   100%    /dev
/dev/da0s9    238G    155M    219G     0%    /usr
/dev/da0s6    1.9G     50M    1.7G     3%    /usr/obj
/dev/da0s8    7.7G    520M    6.6G     7%    /usr/ports
/dev/da0s7    989M    583M    327M    64%    /usr/src
/dev/da0s5     15G     98M     14G     1%    /var


The ad0 drive is the internal drive, on which Mac OS X is installed.  =
The external FW drive is da0.  The FreeBSD root partition is on =
partition 2 in the output above.

Do the OpenFirmware partition numbers match the corresponding ones in =
the gpart output, or are they one less?  (Or, do they match the slice =
numbers, which appear to be one greater?)

FWIW, when I boot from the graphical chooser, the "Boot volume" is =
printed during boot as =
/pci@f4000000/firewire@e/node@0010b9f700fc75e4/sbp-2@c000/disk@0:3

Any clues as to why booting from the OpenFirmware prompt is not working?

Cheers,

Paul.




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