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Date:      Tue, 5 Oct 2010 15:18:52 -0400
From:      Paul Mather <paul@gromit.dlib.vt.edu>
To:        freebsd-ppc@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Booting FreeBSD/powerpc from external FireWire drive?
Message-ID:  <8040E102-FEBF-48E3-AA06-ADD47458C963@gromit.dlib.vt.edu>
In-Reply-To: <20101005195613.22292695.torfinn.ingolfsen@broadpark.no>
References:  <40D5CC15-8828-4CFD-AE13-2211B9742AE2@gromit.dlib.vt.edu> <20101001150548.6a652cba@anacreon.physics.wisc.edu> <5F44B27D-0A14-4F59-8EA2-2D52ADC4C79D@gromit.dlib.vt.edu> <4CAA4828.3010906@freebsd.org> <07BF978E-D458-4138-8871-00D5AC1106C0@gromit.dlib.vt.edu> <20101005195613.22292695.torfinn.ingolfsen@broadpark.no>

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On Oct 5, 2010, at 1:56 PM, Torfinn Ingolfsen wrote:

> On Tue, 05 Oct 2010 09:16:31 -0400
> Paul Mather <paul@gromit.dlib.vt.edu> wrote:
>=20
>> It would be nice to be able to have \loader loaded from the external =
FW drive, too, but this solution works.
>=20
> Well, if you follow the instructions[1] at the PPC wiki page[2], to
> create a small Apple bootstrap partition on your firewire drive, does
> it not work?
>=20
> The commands are (example substitue your own drive) :
> gpart add -s 800K -t apple-boot ad0
> gpart bootcode -p /mnt/boot/boot1.hfs -i <index of boot partition> ad0
>=20
> Note; I have only done this on an internal disk, so I don't know if it
> works for external disks too.
> My sequence was:
> gpart add -s 800K -t '!Apple_Bootstrap' ad1
> dd if=3D/boot/boot1.hfs of=3D/dev/ad1s2
>=20
> (this was back in June, so perhaps 'gpart bootcode' didn't work then?)
>=20
> References:
> 1) http://people.freebsd.org/~nwhitehorn/ppcinstall.txt
> 2) http://wiki.freebsd.org/powerpc

I followed those instructions during installation to partition the =
external drive and put boot code on it.  It works when booting from the =
graphical boot chooser (obtained by holding down the Option key during =
boot), but I couldn't figure out a way to boot from an external FireWire =
drive from the OpenFirmware prompt (Cmd-Opt-O-F startup).  All of the =
examples I could find refer to booting from the internal hard drive or =
from the CD-ROM drive.

My motivation is that I want to test FreeBSD on a headless Xserve G5 =
that lacks the capability for a graphical boot chooser, but does allow =
booting via OpenFirmware over a serial terminal.  The workaround arrived =
at in my previous message allows booting from the external FireWire =
drive, but still requires an Install CD or /boot/loader to be present on =
the internal hard drive.

Cheers,

Paul.





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