miboot on a 6400
sadfsdf
yellowdog-general@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com
Fri, 30 Jul 2004 11:12:37 -0500
Currently im getting a tux with a red X on there. Ive been reading your
guide from april of last year
(http://lists.terrasoftsolutions.com/pipermail/yellowdog-general/2003-April/006938.html)
but nothing seems to work, I press space and nothing happens I press tab
still nothing happens, i do command+alt+shift+del and I get miboot
saying "open error -43"
Alexander Holst wrote:
>> Message: 10
>> Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 09:14:48 +0300
>> Subject: Re: miboot on a 6400
>> From: nathan <nathan@incirlik.net>
>> To: "yellowdog general lists.terrasoftsolutions.com"
>> <yellowdog-general@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com>
>> Reply-To: yellowdog-general@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com
>>
>>
>>
>> AFAIK, miBoot is really hard to get to work on the PPC/Performa
>> machines.
>
>
> Not really ;) - All my OldWorld Macs (5 in total) boot through it,
> even my beige G3 and my Performa 5200 :)
>
>> Why not get a copy of BootX 1.2.x. In my experience it's the easiest to
>> setup and use on the oldworld machines...
>
>
> Some people like their machines to be Mac OS free to save some disk
> space and to avoid licence issues ;)
>
> Hi sadfsdf,
>
>> My directory tree for the miboot partition is like this
>> |-- System Folder (note: Mac OS has blessed the folder)
>> | |-- Finder
>> | |-- System
>> | |-- boot.conf
>> |-- Linux Kernels
>> | |-- vmlinux-2.4.22-2f
>> | |-- vmlinux-2.24.22-2fBOOT
>> |-- ramdisk.image.gz
>> |-- boot.conf
>
>
> You have _two_ boot.conf files! Use one or the other - I assume miboot
> gets confused which one to use. I usually erase the one in the System
> Folder and use one at the root level of the HFS partition. It is
> easier to manage from the Linux side then, as you avoid the space in
> the "System Folder" in its path, which can cause some problems when
> using the command line.
>
>> My boot.conf is thus:
>>
>> init-message = "\n Welcome to YDL!\Press <TAB> for boot options.\n\n"
>> timeout = 50
>>
>> default = bootYDL
>>
>> image = vmlinux-2.4.22-2f
>> label = bootYDL
>> root = /dev/hda6
>> append = "video=valkyriefb3:vmode:14,cmode:8"
>>
>> image = vmlinux-2.4.22-2fBOOT
>> label = install_YDL
>> initrd = ramdisk.image.gz
>> initrd-size=16384
>> root = /dev/ram0
>> append = "video=valkyriefb3:vmode:14,cmode:8 text"
>
>
> Have you tried without any append = "video=..." line? It should work
> without that line. It will usually use 640x480 then, or the settings
> which have been left in the PRAM from the last time you had booted
> into Mac OS. 640x480 is enough to run the installer, after that you
> can try several commands (fbset, nvvideo | read the man pages of those
> two) to tweak video settings and find out about your graphics chip by
> consulting /var/log/dmesg. Also, as already pointed out by another
> poster, the video line should only read valkyriefb and not
> valkyriefb3, in case the machine does have a valkyrie chipset.
>
> Do you get a boot-screen with a landscape and TUX? If so, at least
> some part of miboot has loaded successfully. Increase the "timeout =
> 50" to "timeout = 100" so you'll have 10 secs of boot delay. This
> should suffice in most cases to get the monitor warmed up and to
> display the initial boot screen. Hitting the space bar during that
> first boot scree will get you into a boot menue.
>
> Your problem might also be, that miboot ignores the "default =
> bootYDL" line and will always boot the first set of entries in
> boot.conf after the timeout, which in your case would be the attempt
> to boot an installation that isn't there as of yet (or did you
> allready get YDL installed). From within the boot menue, you will be
> able to choose from your presets in boot.conf and customly add append
> parameters. After installation, put your preferred set of parameters
> as the first set into boot.conf, then automatic boot will start after
> the timeout period.
>
> Also, "root = /dev/hda6" seems a too early partition to hold a linux
> fs to me, as I assume you also have your mibbot partition on the same
> drive. A typical Mac partitioned drive looks as follows:
>
> Partition map (with 512 byte blocks) on '/dev/sda'
> #: type name length base ( size )
> 1: Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1
> 2: Apple_Driver43*Macintosh 54 @ 64
> 3: Apple_Driver43*Macintosh 74 @ 118
> 4: Apple_Driver_IOKit Macintosh 512 @ 192
> 5: Apple_Patches Patch Partition 512 @ 704
> 6: Apple_HFS "Boot_Linux" 204800 @ 1216 (100.0M)
> 7: Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap 524288 @ 206016 (256.0M)
> 8: Apple_UNIX_SVR2 backup 3448560 @ 730304 ( 1.6G)
> 9: Apple_Free Extra 10 @ 4178864
>
> The the earliest partition, in my above example, to hold a Linux fs
> would be partition 7 and onwards. The root=... line specifies the
> partition which holds the file system that is mounted on / under
> Linux, _not_ the partition that holds the miboot loader. My example
> shows a drive that I only use to boot, hold my secondary swap space
> and a backup partition, as my Linux installation is on an IDE drive
> attached to an IDE controller (Promise Ultra 100 TX2), that is only
> visible to the Linux kernel, but not to the Mac (a PM 7500/100)
> itself. So I am forced to use a SCSI disk to hold my miboot partition.
>
> I hope that helps and "un-hardens" the use of miboot on a PPC/Performa.
>
> BTW, the Performa 6400 is a PCI machine, isn't it? If it is still a
> NuBus architecture machine, you need a different kernel. The kernels
> supplied on the YDL CDs won't work on a NuBus type machine. In that
> case, go to http://nubus-pmac.sf.net to get a kernel. You won't be
> able to follow the "normal" installation procedure though. Feel free
> to contact me in that case. I managed to get YDL-3.0 installed on my
> Performa 5200 from scratch. It needs some tricks though.
>
>
> Greetings,
> Alex
>
>
>
> Alexander Holst
> Pforzheim University of Applied Sciences
> <holst [at] fh-pforzheim [dot] de>
> ph: +49 [0]7231 28-6837
> fx: +49 [0]7231 28-6040
>
>