LinuxPPC and Pismo Powerbook

[Ethan Benson]

On Tue, Mar 28, 2000 at 11:03:29PM -0800, Henry Worth wrote:

> > * STEPS :
> > 1.  partitioned the HD into three partititions: MacOS, Linux, Swap
> 
> I'd strongly recommend a small HFS boot partition (~32MB).

32MB??  lord no, 800K is more then enough for yaboot.

this partition should also be given a partition type of
Apple_Bootstrap to prevent Macos from mounting, and subsquently
screwing it up.  (it removes the `blessing' from anything that might
not be a valid macos system folder)

> 2) Set up a "blessed" system folder in the HFS boot partition
>    containing yaboot and yaboot.conf. There is a link to tool
>    on Ben's website to help with that (or copy the system folder
>    from the LinuxPPC 2000 CD). You can then:

the tool i think you are refering to is ybin, which i wrote to format
bootstrap partitions in such a way that OpenFirmware will boot from
them with its default settings.

the following is required for this to work:

* bootstrap partition must be placed BEFORE the macos partition.

* bootstrap partition must NOT be mountable by macos, otherwise it
will undo my changes.  so you MUST use the Apple_Bootstrap partition
type.

once you have this, you can run the following command with ybin 0.11
(0.12 will be a bit better)

mkofboot --boot /dev/hda5 --magicboot /boot/ofboot.b 

you must have yaboot installed at /boot/yaboot and the yaboot.conf at
/etc/yaboot.conf, if not specify the paths with -i /path/to/yaboot and
-c /path/to/yaboot.conf 

ofboot.b is a small openfirmware script, i include 2, one is intendted
for linux only systems, the other has a mini boot menu, you need to
edit them to correct the OF partitions for macos and the bootstrap
partition.  

now what mkofboot does for you is create the HFS filesystem on the
bootstrap partition (example above is /dev/hda5, adjust for your
system) and copy yaboot, yaboot.conf, and the ofboot.b OF script to
the boot partition.  it then sets the filetype on the ofboot.b script
to `tbxi' and blesses the root directory.  this way when you reboot
you can hold down:

command option o f 

while your system boots to reset OF to default values, and up comes
the multiboot menu. neat eh? no need to enter OF at all under most
circumstances. 

>    a> Set that partition as the default boot partition from
>       the MacOS partition.

no need. and you can't, if macos is allowed to mount the bootstrap
partition it will remove the blessing and OF will reject the partition
as bootable.
	
> 
>    c> The OF boot-device and boot-file variables can be set to change
>       the default boot partition and file. With this approach you
>       don't need the system folder, see the maillist archives.

if you must set the boot-device (i have not had to on my blue g3, you
might for a scsi system) set it to:

hd:<#>,\\:tbxi

where <#> is the partition number of the bootstrap partition.

> 
> 3) There are examples of some slick dual-boot OF scripts in the
>    recent mail archives. I need to find them again myself (there was
>    a thread with a good writeup), and set my system up that way, it's

there is a simple one with ybin, fancier ones may be found elsewhere,
just drop whichever one you prefer in /boot/ofboot.b and ybin will use
it.

ybin is available at my web page (.sig) or at
http://www.linuxppc.org/ybin/


-- 
Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 240 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.ozlabs.org/pipermail/linuxppc-dev/attachments/20000329/62cbf34b/attachment.pgp>