Hello Frank, thank you very much for the detailed answer :-)
> Am 26.02.2019 um 20:20 schrieb Frank Scheiner <frank.schei...@web.de>: > > Hi Karl, > >> On 2/26/19 17:34, Carlos wrote: >> Hello Adrian, >> >> when you are talking about GRUB, are you talking about GRUB2? >> Are you aware of this page? >> http://cynic.cc/blog/posts/running_grub2_on_powerpc_macs/ >> >> I just found this page. Don’t know if this helps your development. > > Let me answer for Adrian and hopefully clarify things a little. :-) > > It's out of the question that GRUB2 (nowadays often referred to as just > GRUB) works on NewWorld Power Macs and also POWER based machines (which > are also in the scope of this list). We tested GRUB successfully on many > NewWorld Power Macs from the Blue & White G3 to the 11,2 type G5 (also > incl. Slot Load Xserve G4 and G5) - IIRC actually using the method from > the URL you mentioned above. We also confirmed that it works on POWER > based machines down to POWER5. All that already in 2017 IIRC. > > The issue we still have is that we do not yet have an implementation for > the d-i/grub-installer (the "package" that actually installs GRUB during > a Debian installation) that does successfully install GRUB on NewWorld > Power Macs. We have such an implementation for POWER based machines though. > > But the NewWorld Power Mac specifics for booting a machine are a little > more complex. The usual way is to put a boot loader like GRUB on a HFS > partition (the NewWorld bootstrap partition) from which the firmware can > load and start it. But as there is no "full" support (i.e. file system > handling) for HFS in the partitioning step of the Debian installation, > we need to implement the file system handling for HFS in addition. And > we also have to take care not to scuttle the support for other > architectures in d-i/grub-installer. All that takes time for development > and testing. Not enough we also need to be able to fix the bootstrap > partition during runtime, e.g. in case of FS errors, which is currently > broken for G5s with 64 bit userland but also being worked on. So in time > we will get all this working. > > **** > > Everything written above was also already posted to this list some time > ago, so it's strongly recommended to check the list archive ([1]) - for > maybe the last two years or so. :-) Yes, I know, that's a lot of stuff, > but it will give the reader a profound background and a much better > understanding of the topics on this list. > > [1]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/ > > Cheers, > Frank
