Re: install files on mac UFS partition (mac mini G4)

On Sat, Nov 06, 2021 at 18:58:23 +0100, kristoff wrote:

> - I managed to format the first partition in HFS format and put
> ofwboot.elf and ofwboot.xcf on it

Why?  Do you plan to dual-boot with OS X?  ISTR you mentioned you
don't, so why go through the unnecessary hoops?  All to end up with a
filesystem for the bootloaders that you cannot write to natively too.


> - what is the difference between 'ofwboot.elf' and 'ofwboot.xcf'
> anyway?  (except that the latter is a lot larger).

As the suffix indicates, one is ELF, the other is XCOFF.  Other than
that they are literally identical binary code.


> Some blogs indicate that the '.xcf' version is buggy and that you
> must use the 'elf' version, while other do use the '.xcf' in the
> final configuration?

On Mini G4 the XCF version exhibits a bug where it cannot load kernels
larger than a certain size, so netbsd-GENERIC.gz would boot, but
uncompressed netbsd-GENERIC wouldn't.  thorpej@ was fixing memory
management issues in this area in -current a while back, so may be
it's fixed already, I don't know.


-uwe