Ethan Benson wrote: > > On Wed, Dec 13, 2000 at 09:26:12AM -0800, Mike Fedyk wrote: > > > > Great, Although, this makes me wonder. Why don't we just create a hfs > > partition > > with a blessed system file like we do with the hfs boot disk? > > several reasons, the hfs boot floppy uses miboot, which is not a good > general purpose bootloader at all. its incapable of dual booting > anything. it has no text based config file so you must reconfigure it > by editing the binary with a hexeditor. and i don't think it can even > be packaged for debian and put in main since it cannot be compile > within debian, it requires a non-free OS with a non-free compiler to > build. besides that unlike newworlds you can't use the > Apple_Bootstrap partition type to prevent MacOS from mounting a miboot > partition which means that if you boot macos your miboot partition > will be made unbootable as macos will see its not real and remove the > bootblock and blessing. > > miboot also is incapable of reading kernels off an ext2fs.
Hmm, ok. Although, why did my hfs boot floppy still work after I mounted it on macos? > > > Yeah, I found that out the hard way. The debbootstrap wouldn't even tell > > you > > why it couldn't "make debian boot directly from the hard disk"... Although > > I > > did find some docs that said quik needs the kernel on the same partition as > > /etc. The symlink problem is new though, to me at least. > > in general you should NEVER make a seperate /boot partition, leave it > on the root filesystem. /boot is only needed on broken x86 systems. > That is what I've been using for linux, up until now. I only have one on a new computer, and that is at work. > > Great, I just mirrored the archive a week ago. When did this new set go in? > > Will it actually let you make a boot floppy now? > > you cannot make a boot floppy on powerpc, this funtion in dbootstrap > has now been properly disabled, it now just displays a dialog telling > you it cannot be done instead of failing obscurly. > > i posted my quik comments several times in the last month if you have > november you should have it. I'll take a look at the archives, thanks. > > > I have had to go through the process of hfs-boot-floppy => > > debian-install-root > > => mount drives on /target => chroot /target..... to be able to work in the > > system. > > if you have a seperate /boot get rid of it, get all the kernels > properly installed in /boot on the / filesystem setup a quik.conf like > so: > > partition=2 > > image=/boot/vmlinux-2.2.18pre21 > label=Linux > root=/dev/hda2 > read-only > > change root= to be your root partition, and partition= to the same > partition number as root. then just run /sbin/quik and > nvsetenv boot-device `ofpath /dev/hda2` Actually, it didn't start working until I started using partition zero. I'll have to try this again on the other 8500 and 7200s I have here. > > > If it won't make a boot floppy for me, how do I make one? I noticed the > > kernel > > compile the boot floppies or do it all manually, see the boot floppies > source for how to do that. > I've compiled a kernel and made a boot floppy, already. Is there a way to use one without modifying OF? > > is 2.5 MB in my /boot after the initial install, so I won't be able to use > > that > > one... maybe the one on the hfs boot floppy would work... Any ideas? > > i don't know how the miboot floppies actually work it just about has > to be using either a xcoff kernel or a gzipped kernel but i don't > think miboot supports either, i have not disected the miboot boot > floppies to see what magic drow pulled. > The kernel on the floppy is much smaller, less than 1 MB. I am in the process of compiling a new kernel now. Do I need any patches, or is stock 2.2.17 ok? Mike Fedyk
