Hello! I would like to ask users running Debian on a real PowerMac machine (G3, G4, G5 etc) to help me verify a theory on the boot mechanism. In particular, the question is whether we can skip setting the boot-device in NVRAM in the grub-installer script which causes incompatibilities with the PowerMac emulation in QEMU [1].
According to Apple's documentation [2], Open Firmware will automatically search for available operating systems, so there is no need to explicitly set the path to the boot device. To verify this, I set the boot device on my iBook G4 to NULL and checked whether the machine would still boot which turns out to be true. However, before I change the code in grub-installer, I want to make sure it won't break any other PowerMacs. So, if you would like to help, please try the following. As root, run: root@ibook-g4:~# nvram --print-config=boot-device /pci@f4000000/ata-6@d/@0:2,\\:txbi root@ibook-g4:~# nvram --update-config boot-device="" root@ibook-g4:~# nvram --print-config=boot-device root@ibook-g4:~# reboot If your machine still comes up after changing "boot-device" to zero, we know that it's safe to drop the NVRAM part from the grub-installer script for PowerMacs. This will fix the remaining compatibility with QEMU. Thanks, Adrian > [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2022/03/msg00029.html > [2] https://opensource.apple.com/source/bless/bless-37/README.BOOTING -- .''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz : :' : Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org `. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de `- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
