miboot on a 6400
Daniel Gimpelevich
yellowdog-general@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com
Fri, 30 Jul 2004 10:42:58 -0700
You have not told us which version of miBoot you are using (and saying 1.0a3
means nothing; they're all 1.0a3). Where did you get this miBoot? Is it the
version that comes with YDL? That version does not use boot.conf at all. The
only version that does is the binary-only version that came with LinuxPPC
2000. All other versions must be configured using a resource editor such as
ResEdit.
--
"No gnu's is good gnu's." --Gary Gnu, "The Great Space Coaster"
> From: sadfsdf <ydl@augustmail.com>
> Reply-To: yellowdog-general@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com
> Newsgroups: gmane.linux.yellowdog.general
> Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 11:12:37 -0500
> Subject: Re: miboot on a 6400
>
> 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/00
> 6938.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
>>
>>
>
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