yaboot problems (still -- suggestions welcome!)

I've been struggling with it for over a week now, but am still unable to

yaboot (though I think I've made some minimal progress).

I have a G4/500 with linux on a dedicated external scsi drive (Adaptec 2906 card).

Per OF, the card corresponds to:
/pci@f2000000/pci-bridge@d/pci9004,7850@2/@2 (It is device 2 on the scsi chain, or at least that's what the back of the hard drive implies.)

pdisk says the bootstrap partition is #2:
Partition map (with 512 byte blocks) on '/dev/sda'
#: type name length base ( size )

 1:    Apple_UNIX_SVR2 /            7785303 @ 204     (  3.7G)
 2:    Apple_HFS "bootstrap"         65638 @ 7785507 ( 32.0M)
 3:    Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap    1048592 @ 7851145 (512.0M)

[rest deleted]

Set the relevant line in /boot/ofboot.b (which is cp'd from the menu_ofboot.b):
" Booting Yaboot ..." cr " boot sd:2,yaboot" eval

My /etc/yaboot.conf is as follows:
--------------
default=Linux-Stable

## change to your bootstrap partition ie /dev/hda2 boot=/dev/sda2
device=sd:
timeout=20
install=/boot/yaboot magicboot=/boot/ofboot.b

image=/boot/vmlinux
label=Linux-Stable
root=/dev/sda1
read-only
partition=2

append= "video=aty128fb:vmode:17;cmode:24"
-----------------

Now, in OF, when I try to set sd as a devalias, it tells me the nvramrc isn't valid. When I printenv, I don't see it showing up anywhere (but maybe I don't know what to look for, exactly?).

When in OF and I try to boot directly by providing the OF path manually,

I get this error:
method <open> not found ; ihandle=ff9c4980 phandle=ff8a9708 method <close> not found ihandle=ff9c4980 phandle=ff8a9708 can't OPEN:
/pci@f2000000/.... {etc}.
I don't know what this means or what to do with this information. (Anyone have any idea?)

One last thing: I have managed in the past week to get ybin working (my bootstrap was mounted in the mtab).

But I have no idea how to proceed from here. I'm about to start my medical internship, and will have no more time to fiddle with this starting about two weeks from now.

Sorry to whine! :-)
Any/all suggestions most welcome! Thanks!

Tom

Thomas Dilling, MD
[email protected]

The original message was received at Wed, 24 May 2000 17:50:22 -0400 from adsl-216-158-26-6.cust.oldcity.dca.net [216.158.26.6]

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I've been struggling with it for over a week now, but am still unable to yaboot (though I think I've made some minimal progress).

I have a G4/500 with linux on a dedicated external scsi drive (Adaptec 2906 card).

Per OF, the card corresponds to:
/pci@f2000000/pci-bridge@d/pci9004,7850@2/@2 (It is device 2 on the scsi chain, or at least that's what the back of the hard drive implies.)

pdisk says the bootstrap partition is #2:
Partition map (with 512 byte blocks) on '/dev/sda'
#: type name length base ( size )

 1:    Apple_UNIX_SVR2 /            7785303 @ 204     (  3.7G)
 2:    Apple_HFS "bootstrap"         65638 @ 7785507 ( 32.0M)
 3:    Apple_UNIX_SVR2 swap    1048592 @ 7851145 (512.0M)

[rest deleted]

Set the relevant line in /boot/ofboot.b (which is cp'd from the menu_ofboot.b):
" Booting Yaboot ..." cr " boot sd:2,yaboot" eval

My /etc/yaboot.conf is as follows:
--------------
default=Linux-Stable

## change to your bootstrap partition ie /dev/hda2 boot=/dev/sda2
device=sd:
timeout=20
install=/boot/yaboot magicboot=/boot/ofboot.b

image=/boot/vmlinux
label=Linux-Stable
root=/dev/sda1
read-only
partition=2

append= "video=aty128fb:vmode:17;cmode:24"
-----------------

Now, in OF, when I try to set sd as a devalias, it tells me the nvramrc isn't valid. When I printenv, I don't see it showing up anywhere (but maybe I don't know what to look for, exactly?).

When in OF and I try to boot directly by providing the OF path manually, I get this error:
method <open> not found ; ihandle=ff9c4980 phandle=ff8a9708 method <close> not found ihandle=ff9c4980 phandle=ff8a9708 can't OPEN:
/pci@f2000000/.... {etc}.
I don't know what this means or what to do with this information. (Anyone have any idea?)

One last thing: I have managed in the past week to get ybin working (my bootstrap was mounted in the mtab).

But I have no idea how to proceed from here. I'm about to start my medical internship, and will have no more time to fiddle with this starting about two weeks from now.

Sorry to whine! :-)
Any/all suggestions most welcome! Thanks!
Tom

Thomas Dilling, MD
[email protected]

No clue. I've had similar problems running yaboot on my G4. Does BootX not work for you?

David

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this is a waste of space, since your swap partition is right below perhaps you would want to delete them both and create the bootstrap partition as 800K and the swap partition as 544.

you should at the very least delete it and recreate it with the correct Apple_Bootstrap partition type, otherwise macos will screw it up.

nvalias is the proper command to create an alias, though i find it simpler to just enter the full path in yaboot.conf and ofboot.b. that way you 1) don't have to fsck with OF. and 2) don't have to fsck with OF if your nvram gets erased.

exactly what boot command did you use? it should be as follows:

boot /pci@f2000000/pci-bridge@d/pci9004,7850@2/@2:2,yaboot

you can put that in ofboot.b.

if that is what you used then it looks to me like the scsi card is not really OF supported, can you boot macos off of it? (if you have macos)

yes you bootstrap partition should never be mounted anywhere, not in linux, not in macos. treat it like a bootblock that is all it is. your kernels belong in your ext2 root filesystem.

Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/

I saw it noted in the preliminary yBin/yaBoot documentation that a newer kernel was recommended, suggesting a 2.2.15pre3 or later.

Is there anything specific about the 2.2.14 that won't allow it to work?

I'm using a 2.2.14 kernel built from standard source (ftp.kernel.org) with the 2.3.50 usb backport.

I tried that backport with a 2.2.15 kernel, and it boots (BootX), but when booting the typical USB info doesn't scroll by the screen and no usb devices are available (for example, upon starting X, error 19, can't open usb mouse device)

Part of me thinks that may be BootX related, I had to upgrade BootX when switching to my current kernel due to usb weirdness, but I don't know for sure.

I know the FAQ is up, but its not quite finished yet- (but what is done is very good so far)

The way I made a boostrap partition was to first create apple hfs partition. I then wrote down the start block and length in blocks, and (using pdisk) deleted the partition, using a C {create by specified type), entering Apple_Bootstrap when it asked for file system type.

Is that correct?

***

The drive my bootstrap partition will be located on is internal scsi, attached to an adaptec 2930u controller.

I'm fairly sure I can find the full path to the device in the open firmware, but interestingly enough- Apple System Profiler does NOT see the scsi card or give any info on it.

It does not appear in the pci devices, although volumes attached to the card ARE seen by System Profiler, and seen on bus 1 (opposed to the built in bus 0)

Weird.

Thanks,
Michael A. Peters

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http://www.linuxzombies.com/
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well it will work if you apply patches by BenH, there are changed to prom.c and such to make it compatible with yaboot.

you would need BenH patches (no longer avaiable AFAIK)

2.2.15 Linus is pretty close, but there is still alot of PPC stuff that needs patching, i still reccommend the Paul tree for newworlds. i have a final (no pre) 2.2.15 with paul's patches, in case he has already thrown away 2.2.15 in favor of unstable 2.2.16pres, if that happens (like it has for the last 4 kernels i have kept track of) i will make a unified diff to the linus tree avialable.

Bootx does all kinds of strange things on newworlds anymore. especially on OS9. (it gets worse the newwer the hardware it would appear)

compliments to Eric for the great work on the FAQ. i think he is working on partitioning help now.

yup that should work fine, i typically just create a single HFS partition that spans all the space i will need for all the linux partitions and delete it in pdisk/mac-fdisk creating all the linux partitions i need. the main problem i see with using apples fdisk for only the bootstrap partition is i don't think it lets your create it 800K, anything larger then that is just a huge waste of space (even with 800K partition 740 of it is wasted)

do you have macos on an internal IDE? or is there even an internal IDE at all? if not default OF settings will probably work but it might be slow. if that is the case you will have to set the boot-device yourself unfortunatly. (is anyone still working on reenabling /dev/nvram on newworld?)

interesting, yes you can find it in OF, just do:

dev / ls
and walk the tree like so:

dev /pci@XXXXXXXX ls

until you find it, it sucks but thats the price you pay for scsi i suppose (after the dent in the wallet scsi makes ;-))

are you sure it has an OF ROM? for it to be bootable it must have an OF bootrom on the card, otherwise it probably just uses a MacOS extension to make it visable to macos. linux could do the same but it would be impossible to boot from it. (from either OS since OF must be able to read it)

Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/