[ please fix your mailer to wrap lines in a readable fashion ] On Wed, Jan 24, 2001 at 01:45:00PM -0800, Andrew Sharp wrote:
> I have included the whole text of this message because there is so
> much useful info concentrated here, I figured it wouldn't hurt to
> have it exposed to the list again.
> I only wanted to comment on a couple of things. First, of course
> when I said "boot partition" I wasn't referring to a /boot
> partition, I meant the Apple_boot partition. This is a very
> confusing topic for newbies to powerpc arch. In the man page for
> bootstrap(8), there is a whole big section on OLD WORLD MACs. That
> would imply that it has some use on these machines. But according
> to this, and I believe it's true, yaboot isn't any use on these OWM
> machines, only quik and ~shiver~ miboot. [Don't forget BootX.]
> Logic classes in college ~:^) teach me that the conclusion therefore
> is that bootstrap partitions aren't useful on OWM, and therefore
> should there be any mention in the man page about OWMs execpt to say
> "don't bother, use quik on your linux partition with the kernel?"
yes, bootstrap is a generic term for booting an Operating system on a
computer. OldWorld macs use the quik bootstrap, and thus the quik
bootstrap(8) man page is included there, (in the OLDWORLD section).
when you read further you get to the NEWWORLD section, which explains
what you need to do for your machine.
in the very first paragragh you see:
This man page is divided into two sections, OLDWORLD and NEWWORLD,
please read the section appropriate to your hardware.
so if you have a newworld machine (this paragraph also explains how to
tell teh difference) you are supposed to skip down to the newworld
section.
the oldworld section makes no note of bootstrap partitions, instead it
explains how OF loads the quik boot sectors and how quik loads the
rest of itself.
> You mention that I should stop whining and volunteer. I hear that.
> Where do I sign up? I don't get a rash writing documentation. The
> install documention is _really_ confusing on powermacs, and it is
> now clear to me why, but I definitely wouldn't mind taking a whack
> at fixing the install/boot parts of the docs. Be prepared to proof
> read!
subscribe to debian-boot, download the current boot-floppies tree from
CVS.
# If you are using anonymous (readonly) access:
export CVSROOT=:pserver:[EMAIL PROTECTED]:/cvs/debian-boot
cvs login
# You will be prompted for a password -- just hit `Enter'.
then run:
cvs co boot-floppies
all the documentation is there in .sgml format.
> I do have one whine about yaboot, quik, and mkofboot, which is that
> they all should add a testing option, like -t in lilo (I apologise
> for having to use lilo as an example). This is very helpful when
> trying to figure out if the options/configuration you have specified
> is messed up or not, and is VERY helpful when you have changed
> things and neglected to edit your config file! A mistake in there
> parameters can sometimes be catastrofic and so therefore I am
> suggesting that this is a very useful addition to these programs.
> Again, I volunteer if needed, but it probably would go a lot faster
> by someone who is more familiar with these programs. For anyone who
> cares, I am currently using the BootX approach where it starts to
> boot macos, then bootx takes over and it boots linux. Sometimes
> called the "BootX extentions" method. Kinda like if you put linload
> in your windows startup directory. OK, I know there isn't
> necessarily a lot of Windohs users on this list ~:^) It was easy to
> set up and fairly flexible when it comes to adding new kernels. I
> wrote a pathetically simple shell script to copy new kernels over to
> the right place in the macos partition. Of course, bootx is pretty
> useless if you want to wipe macos off your system.
ybin/mkofboot will abort the bootstrap installation if any errors are
detected in the configuration file. however ybin cannot test
everything in your yaboot.conf, it is not able to test whether your
image= device= and partition= entries are correct for example. yaboot
will however allow you to boot a arbitary kernel from its command line
even if your config file is invalid, the syntax is as follows:
(from the boot: prompt)
hd:3,/boot/vmlinux-2.2.18 root=/dev/hda3
note this feature has been found to be broken in yaboot 0.9, it will
be fixed in the next version of yaboot which should come soon.
--
Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/
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