Hello, On 10/2/24 5:57 AM, Ed Robbins wrote: > Hi Adrian, > > On Wed, 2 Oct 2024 at 12:42, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz > <glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de> wrote: >> >> Hello Ed, >> >> On Wed, 2024-10-02 at 12:35 +0100, Ed Robbins wrote: >>> Picking up from the other thread... this is about booting OS X on >>> apple ppc hardware when grub is being used to boot Linux. >> >> Ah, that's a completely different problem then. I don't actually know whether >> GRUB can load other bootloaders when using Open Firmware (ieee1275). >>
It apparently can't. At least it can't boot Mac OS (9.2.2) or Mac OS X (10.4.11) on a Pismo PowerBook (error messages have been documented elsewhere). > I think Ben's solution (the BootX file he shared) is just an > openfirmware script that runs before grub, which allows you to choose > between a grub/os x/CD. And it is also how yaboot handled this (I > think his script is a modification of the yaboot one). But I am not > sure how to make that script run by default instead of jumping > straight to grub. > >> This is probably something that needs to be asked on the grub-devel mailing >> list. > > Although grub shows options for the other installed operating systems > (i.e. OS X) it indeed seems unable to boot them. I am not sure if this > is supposed to work. > >> >> Adrian >> ... As a test, I installed Debian SID (from the 6-18-2023 netinst CD) on a Pismo (500 MHz, 512 MiB). This system is dedicated to testing things such as GRUB, as well as new releases of Debian, Gentoo, etc. The Pismo started with Mac OS 9.2.2 and Mac OS X 10.4.11 Tiger, and a blank Apple_Bootstrap partition (so one can switch between Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X Tiger using the Startup Disk control panel). Linux-related partitions were configured but left blank: # parted -l Model: ATA ST9120821A (scsi) Disk /dev/sda: 120GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: mac Disk Flags: Number Start End Size File system Name Flags 1 512B 32.8kB 32.3kB Apple 2 32.8kB 61.4kB 28.7kB Macintosh 3 61.4kB 90.1kB 28.7kB Macintosh 4 90.1kB 119kB 28.7kB Macintosh 5 119kB 147kB 28.7kB Macintosh 6 147kB 410kB 262kB Macintosh 7 410kB 672kB 262kB Macintosh 8 672kB 934kB 262kB Patch Partition 9 934kB 68.0MB 67.1MB hfs Apple_Bootstrap boot 10 68.0MB 1142MB 1074MB hfs+ MacOS 11 1142MB 8590MB 7448MB hfs+ MacOSX 12 8590MB 25.8GB 17.2GB ext3 Debian_sid 13 25.8GB 42.9GB 17.2GB ext3 Gentoo 14 42.9GB 44.0GB 1074MB linux-swap(v1) swap swap 15 44.0GB 120GB 76.0GB ext3 data My initial installation failed. I used a default installation with manual partitioning. It failed because I asked it to format the Apple_Bootstrap partition as HFS (I believe the reasons that this fails have been documented elsewhere). Going back to Mac OS 9.2.2, I changed the type of the Apple_Bootstrap partition from Apple_Bootstrap to Apple_HFS, and that allowed me to format it as HFS; I then changed the partition type back to Apple_Bootstrap. Note that parted doesn't distinguish between "Apple HFS" and "Apple_Bootstrap" partitions; both are simply "hfs". Installation then worked (by specifying /dev/sda9 above as the /boot/grub partition without formatting it). There are, of course, alternatives to GRUB that don't seem to have the HFS formatting issue. I use a relatively static installation of yaboot on all of my other Apple Mac powerpc (ppc-32) and G5 (ppc-64) systems. It appears that the yaboot binaries and scripts (including ybin) were installed but aren't used, and I didn't test them. Yaboot has the advantage of being able to boot any Linux distribution, Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X from the menu, and any of these can be booted by default. I realize that yaboot is no longer supported, but it works and will continue to work as long as ext3 filesystems are supported by the Linux kernel. GRUB won't boot Mac OS X on ppc-32 or ppc-64. GRUB on x86-64 and i386 also has issues, such as wrong volume UUIDs that have to be corrected manually in the grub.cfg file. I'll look into reporting those issues and the Apple Mac issues on the the grub-devel mailing list. For now, it would certainly be helpful to have a menu that lets users choose their own bootloader, maybe with the limitations of each listed. Since any use of yaboot would be specific to ppc-32 and ppc-64 systems, updates to yaboot likely won't get much attention except from Debian ports (and it's fine if nobody does anything as long as yaboot isn't prevented from working). My installation on the Pismo was otherwise uneventful, except that Xfce isn't working. I'll continue to investigate that (I suspect something simple like a missing kernel option). I also see some odd random timeouts from systemd. I'm not a systemd user, and the day I'm not able to choose to switch from systemd to sysvinit will be the day that I abandon Debian. I just upgraded Debian on an ibm-pc 386 system that would not let me run Xfce without using systemd -- that system is now running Devuan. Unfortunately, Devuan hasn't been ported to ppc-32 or ppc-64, but Gentoo is a reasonable alternative for Macs (though Debian is also ok for text-only installations). Thanks to all the developers, porters and users who keep GNU/Linux distributions running on old hardware! -Stan
