Re: Trouble booting 8.1 from USB stick on iBook G3 Dual USB

I was able to run to CVS and get some blank CDs, thanks to my father 
giving me cash for Christmas, but my iBook's CD drive was on the fritz. 
However, I was able to install NetBSD anyway by cannibalizing my 
desktop's Internet connection and pulling the sets down via FTP.

Now I'm trying, not very successfully, to stand X up. When I run X with 
the autogenerated configuration, as the website suggests, I get a blank 
screen, and I'm not able to switch to another vtty to kill it.

On 2019-12-21 13:05, Raven King wrote:
> Hello:
> 
> While I am not a current NETBSD user (yet) I have been watching the
> mailing list. I actually used USB to install linux on my system, and a
> lot of the process is probably the same. To boot from USB, you need
> 
> 1. A drive with an Apple partition map (otherwise openfirmware might
> have trouble finding things.)
> 
> 2. An flash drive with two partitions: HFS and another, maybe like FFS
> which the netbsd kernel can mount and execute on (not HFS+ that isn't
> well supported on netbsd I don't think).
> 
> 3. ofwboot.xcf and a netbsd kernel in the hfs partition. They need to
> be together.
> 
> 4. Put the netbsd userland (software) from the Install iso into the
> other partition (other than the kernel/bootloader).
> 
> 5. With this all together, use devalias to find the usb devices. Then
> use 'dir usb<n>/disk@1:<p>' in order to determine drive contents, where
> <n> is the usb number from devalias and <p> is the partition number.
> Remember the apple partition map is actually a partition so the number
> will be at least 2.
> 
> 6. Once you find the files (lets say they are on usb1/disk@1:2 AND
> assuming that the kernel/bootloader are in the root directory), you
> would type 'boot usb1/disk@1:2,\ofwboot.xcf usb1/disk@1:2,\netbsd'
> where the first argument of boot is the file location of the
> bootloader, and the second argument is the location of the kernel. I
> remember having to type the whole path for both arguments.
> 
> 7. From there, with any luck the kernel loaded. If I remember right,
> you should be able to run the installer from there, or at least mount
> filesystems. You are on your own for that part.
> 
> Over time as I become more knowledgeable I may try to build a usb
> installer for macppc port.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Raven King
> 
> On Sat, 2019-12-21 at 12:23 -0500, Michael wrote:
>> Hello,
>> 
>> On Fri, 20 Dec 2019 22:50:26 -0500
>> [email protected] wrote:
>> 
>> > I'm trying to boot 8.1 from a USB drive on my iBook G3 Dual USB
>> > (model
>> > ID `PowerBook4,1`), and I get the following error when trying to
>> > boot to
>> > it:
>> >
>> > 0> boot usb0:,\ofwboot.xcf netbsd.macppc method <load> not
>> > found,
>> > ihandle=ffbc5ac0 phandle=ff960fd0 load-size=0 adler32=1
>> 
>> That's OpenFirmware complaining that it can't 'load' from whatever
>> usb0
>> points at.
>> 
>> > What, if anything, am I doing wrong? or is it simply not possible
>> > to
>> > boot from a USB stick even via trickery?
>> 
>> I never tried it, but I wouldn't be too surprised if it's possible.
>> That said, what does the usb0 devalias actually point at? You need
>> something that points at the actual drive, not just the USB
>> controller.
>> I'm not sure if OF will create device nodes for USB mass storage
>> devices, if it doesn't then we're out of luck. If it does then it
>> likely doesn't support hotplugging so your drive needs to be inserted
>> at power up.
>> 
>> have fun
>> Michael