Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2010 01:29:22 +0200 From: Torfinn Ingolfsen <torfinn.ingolfsen@broadpark.no> To: freebsd-ppc@freebsd.org Subject: FreeBSD 8.1-release on PowerBook G4 - is firewire disks supported? Message-ID: <20101010012922.f65dbcf5.torfinn.ingolfsen@broadpark.no>
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Hello, Are firewire drives supported in FreeBSD 8.1-release on powerpc? I am trying to install FreeBSD 8.1-release on a PowerBook G4[1] I have. The internal disk drive contains OS X, and will continue that way. So I am trying to install FreeBSD on an external drive I have, a Maxtor firewire drive. This drive shows up both in OS X and in Open Firmware, but after booting the FreeBSD install image (disc1), it is nowhere to be seen. - there are no nodes in /dev for it (I used echo /dev/* to verify) - camcontrol devlist -v lists only the memory stick I am booting from - camcontrol rescan all doesn't change anything I can see lines with "firewire" when the machine boots, but there is no dmesg command on the disc1 image, and the PowerBook doesn't have a "scroll lock" key on its keyboard, so its quite hard to look closer at the dmesg. Booting from a usb memory stick. As an added challenge, the internal dvd drive in the PowerBook isn't working anymore, so I have to use other means to boot the FreeBSD installer (disc1). First I tried with a usb cd drive (ok, it is a Plextor DVW writer) I have, but for some reason the Powerbook will not boot from it, neither with the boot choser (alt / opt) or from Open firmware. Not so strange perhaps, as the Plextor drive doesn't show up in Open Firmware at all (it works nicely on a lot of Intel machines, but that is off topic here). For my second try, I simply used dd to copy the FreeBSD-8.1-RELEASE-powerpc-disc1.iso image to a usb memory stick I have, and that worked better. It will not boot from the boot choser (alt / opt on boot), but it will boot from Open firmware, after I have figured out where it lives in the device tree and made an alias for it. The commands I used were: devalias ud /pci@f2000000/usb@1b,1-disk@1 boot ud:,\boot\loader ud:0 More info at my FreeBSD pag for the Powerbook[2]. References: 1) http://sites.google.com/site/tingox/powerbook_g4 2) http://sites.google.com/site/tingox/powerbook_g4_freebsd -- Regards, Torfinn Ingolfsen
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