> > I picked "make bootable directly from hard drive" in the Debian installer > > read the installation docs, its clearly stated that this step is > broken and cannot work on its own. =20
Okay, I'm kinda dense. There is a paragraph in the install docs about this. It's not complete, but it did give me some pointers. Why can't some of the necessary OF majik be run from the bootdisks? > there is no vmlinuz on powermac, no powermac bootloader supports > compressed images, we just use the plain uncompressed ELF for now. =20 I noticed. You should probably fix the bootdisks for the next potato re-release; they make quik.conf load /vmlinuz, which is wrong. > then take that string and give it to nvsetenv: > > nvsetenv boot-device /bandit/gc/mesh/[EMAIL PROTECTED]:0 That horribly broke things. A few useful things you might want to add to the install docs: command-option-p-r at boot resets the PRAM and NVRAM (useful if you totally screw it up) If you have an old-world Mac, read www.netbsd.org's macppc System Disk Tutorial (http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/SystemDisk-tutorial/). Since the OF on oldworlds is buggy (to be polite) you should really run Apple's OF updater first. Also, you may need to patch the OF updater (manually, see http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/SystemDisk-tutorial/of105patch.html ) if you want to boot off a non-Apple disk. I needed some extra cruft in my nvramrc to retry booting several times since the disk I was installing to takes a few seconds to spin up. If you don't see the OF on the screen, try the modem port at 38400 bps, 8N1. If you've got an oldworld Mac between the 7300-8500 (possibly earlier as well) you'll probably need the patched system disk (see URLs above) to get the console OF to work reliably. Apparently OF tries to display before the video timings are all set... And last (but not least), there's not enough space in the nvramrc for both the disk spinup patch and the console/OF patch. Choose wisely. > that MIGHT work, oldworld OF requires a lot of witchcraft to make > boot most of the time... =20 No kidding! So it boots now, and life is beautiful. Next question: is there any way to write out an nvramrc from Linux? I've tried using nvsetenv, but writing out 40 lines of FORTH code, complete with carriage returns, doesn't seem to work. -- Mike Shuey
