Re: The first reboot to hard drive after the CD-rom install failed

On Tue, 31 Mar 2020 13:08:47 -0400
Mark Grieveson <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> On 2020-03-31 8:03 a.m., Michael wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > On Tue, 31 Mar 2020 03:46:30 -0400
> > Mark Grieveson <[email protected]> wrote:
> >  
> >> Hello.  I used a CD-rom, created from NetBSD-9.0-macppc.iso, to install
> >> NetBSD onto an iBook G4.  The iBook G4 accessed the CD via the Open
> >> Firmware command, "boot cd:,\ofwboot.xcf netbsd.macppc'' (as instructed
> >> in the manual).  I only have WiFi, so I did not enable any network
> >> connections.  I figured I could set up the WiFi later when I could
> >> install proper drivers for the Broadcom firmware of the iBook G4.
> >>
> >> Anyway, the install seemed to go well.  Everything was installed from
> >> the CD-rom, which had the full sets on it.  It finished and I was told
> >> by it to reboot to the OS now on the hard drive.  But, instead, it went
> >> to the Open Firmware prompt of the iBook G4 (the little icon that
> >> changes back and forth into a question mark). I'm not sure how to fix this.  
> > You need to put the boot loader ( ofwboot.xcf ) somewhere where
> > OpenFirmware can find it, probably your OSX partition.
> > With that in place you can just boot hd:ofwboot.xcf <kernelname>
> >
> > have fun
> > Michael  
> 
> Hi Michael.  Thanks, I appreciate the feedback.  However, I'm not sure
> how to do what you've suggested.  There is no other OS on the iBook G4
> besides (presumably) NetBSD.

Ouch. We really need to teach the installer to create a small HFS
partition with just the loader in it. On machines with OpenFirmware
before 3 we can put a loader in the first sector of the disk which then
loads the rest of the loader from a NetBSD partition - that's what
installboot does, and likely did on your machine.

> I searched for the file via running the install disk and using the
> command line, and could not locate the file "ofwboot.xcf".

It should be in the CD's root directory.

> Also, in spite of playing around with some Open Firmware commands
> (via the chapter on "Open Firmware boot syntax" in the installation
> manual), I still don't know how I would discover the kernelname, or
> discover the names of different partitions, or discover the location
> of the file ofwboot.xcf.  I looked at the devalias command, which was
> sort of interesting but over my head.

The kernel name on the harddisk would be just 'netbsd', and you can
leave it empty if you don't want to boot something other than the
default from the same disk as the loader.

It should be possible to load the loader from the CD and the kernel
from harddisk using something like "boot cd:,\ofwboot.xcf hd:netbsd" -
a partition number shouldn't be needed, the loader knows how to find a
NetBSD disklabel and will attempt to load a kernel from the 'a'
partition unless instructed otherwise.
If it does want a partition number it should be the number shown by
pdisk - boot cd:,\ofwboot.xcf hd:2/netbsd

have fun
Michael