f7 yaboot problem on G3

[Mike Hammill]

Could someone provide me with a reasonable yaboot.conf file or tell me
how to make one to get f7 to boot on a G3?

Background:

I've been running fc6 on a Mac G3 (blue and white) and earlier version
of fc before that.  I really like it and decided to upgrade to f7.  I
used the clean install option (nothing else on the hard drive) from the
DVD and the installation went fine.  

Originally, I choose the default layout, which seems to put nearly
everything under LVM.  I couldn't boot that, and I figured yaboot
couldn't handle LVM.  So, I started over from scratch and put reasonable
things on LVM, the rest on their own partitions, namely:

/dev/sda3 /boot ext2 120M
/dev/sda4 /var/cache/openafs ext2 2048M
/dev/sda5 / ext3 2048M
/dev/sda6 swap 1024M
/dev/sda7 LVM where
/dev/vg/home 5120M mounted under /home
/dev/vg/opt 2048M mounted as expected...
/dev/vg/tmp 2048M ...
/dev/vg/usr 10240M ...
/dev/vg/var 5120M ...
/dev/vg/userlocal 1024M ...

This also installed fine, and f7 seemed to create /dev/sda2 as an Apple
bootstrap partition.  However, when rebooting, I got the broken folder
icon and the best I can do was reboot to the rescue disk.  Rescue did a
great job, found my f7 installation, mounted all the above (except
openafs partition) and I then chrooted to /mnt/sysimage.  There, I have
tried various incantations to install the boot image to the bootstrap
partition, but nothing works.

Is one to do it from outside chroot, e.g., 

yabootconfig -t /mnt/sysimage -b /dev/sda2

or inside using ybin -v or only use mkofboot?

I hate to say it, but the closest success I got was booting with
Gentoo's CD, mounting everything, running yabootconfig and then on
reboot it at least boots f7's initrd and vmlinuz (however it kernel
panics).  Using only f7's rescue disk, I tried, after letting rescue
find the installation, the following.  Note here I did NOT chroot first:

Try 1:
yabootconfig --chroot /mnt/sysimage
Got:
Unable to locate bootstrap parition on /dev/sda...

Try 2:
yabootconfig --chroot /mnt/sysimage -b /dev/sda2
Got:
Install yaboot bootstrap on /dev/sda2 to boot Linux from /dev/sda5?
[Yes]
Creating a simple /mnt/sysimage/etc/yaboot.config...
Enter kernel image: /mnt/sysimage/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7
Enter an initrd image: /mnt/sysimage/boot/initrd-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7.img
/mnt/sysimage/sbin/yabootconf: line 733: ofpath: command not found
yabootconfig: unable to determine OpenFirmware device name to /dev/sda
aborting.

Try 3:
PATH_PREFIX=/mnt/sysimage yabootconfig --chroot /mnt/sysimage
-b /dev/sda2
Got: same as above except it got a little further.  After entering the
initrd, it gave:
Running mkofboot to make the disk bootable...
Failed to initialize HFS working directories: No such file or directory
mkofboot: /dev/sda2 appears to have never had a bootstrap installed,
please run mkofboot.

I'd like to not give up on f7, but the above is pretty frustrating.

Best regards,
/Mike

[Mike Hammill]

Well, still no luck from my end.  Does anyone have even the slightest
idea if this works on a G3?  I received no response thus far. I realize
Fedora is moving away from PPC, but I was still hoping for a life-line.
I saw f7 demoed by a friend at work on a x86 machine and it was really
impressive.  

I have never really seen an alternative to yaboot on PPC for newworld
Macs.  Is there some other bootloader I should try?  Is f7 know to work
on any other ppc32-based machines?  I have a G4 I could possibly try.

/Mike

On Wed, 2007-06-06 at 16:30 +0200, Mike Hammill wrote:
>  Could someone provide me with a reasonable yaboot.conf file or tell
> me
>  how to make one to get f7 to boot on a G3?
>  
>  Background:
>  
>  I've been running fc6 on a Mac G3 (blue and white) and earlier version
>  of fc before that.  I really like it and decided to upgrade to f7.  I
>  used the clean install option (nothing else on the hard drive) from the
>  DVD and the installation went fine.  
>  
>  Originally, I choose the default layout, which seems to put nearly
>  everything under LVM.  I couldn't boot that, and I figured yaboot
>  couldn't handle LVM.  So, I started over from scratch and put reasonable
>  things on LVM, the rest on their own partitions, namely:
>  
>  /dev/sda3 /boot ext2 120M
>  /dev/sda4 /var/cache/openafs ext2 2048M
>  /dev/sda5 / ext3 2048M
>  /dev/sda6 swap 1024M
>  /dev/sda7 LVM where
>  /dev/vg/home 5120M mounted under /home
>  /dev/vg/opt 2048M mounted as expected...
>  /dev/vg/tmp 2048M ...
>  /dev/vg/usr 10240M ...
>  /dev/vg/var 5120M ...
>  /dev/vg/userlocal 1024M ...
>  
>  This also installed fine, and f7 seemed to create /dev/sda2 as an Apple
>  bootstrap partition.  However, when rebooting, I got the broken folder
>  icon and the best I can do was reboot to the rescue disk.  Rescue did a
>  great job, found my f7 installation, mounted all the above (except
>  openafs partition) and I then chrooted to /mnt/sysimage.  There, I have
>  tried various incantations to install the boot image to the bootstrap
>  partition, but nothing works.
>  
>  Is one to do it from outside chroot, e.g., 
>  
>  yabootconfig -t /mnt/sysimage -b /dev/sda2
>  
>  or inside using ybin -v or only use mkofboot?
>  
>  I hate to say it, but the closest success I got was booting with
>  Gentoo's CD, mounting everything, running yabootconfig and then on
>  reboot it at least boots f7's initrd and vmlinuz (however it kernel
>  panics).  Using only f7's rescue disk, I tried, after letting rescue
>  find the installation, the following.  Note here I did NOT chroot first:
>  
>  Try 1:
>  yabootconfig --chroot /mnt/sysimage
>  Got:
>  Unable to locate bootstrap parition on /dev/sda...
>  
>  Try 2:
>  yabootconfig --chroot /mnt/sysimage -b /dev/sda2
>  Got:
>  Install yaboot bootstrap on /dev/sda2 to boot Linux from /dev/sda5?
>  [Yes]
>  Creating a simple /mnt/sysimage/etc/yaboot.config...
>  Enter kernel image: /mnt/sysimage/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7
>  Enter an initrd image: /mnt/sysimage/boot/initrd-2.6.21-1.3194.fc7.img
>  /mnt/sysimage/sbin/yabootconf: line 733: ofpath: command not found
>  yabootconfig: unable to determine OpenFirmware device name to /dev/sda
>  aborting.
>  
>  Try 3:
>  PATH_PREFIX=/mnt/sysimage yabootconfig --chroot /mnt/sysimage
>  -b /dev/sda2
>  Got: same as above except it got a little further.  After entering the
>  initrd, it gave:
>  Running mkofboot to make the disk bootable...
>  Failed to initialize HFS working directories: No such file or directory
>  mkofboot: /dev/sda2 appears to have never had a bootstrap installed,
>  please run mkofboot.
>  
>  I'd like to not give up on f7, but the above is pretty frustrating.
>  
>  Best regards,
>  /Mike
>  
>

[Paul Nasrat]

On Fri, 2007-06-08 at 21:43 +0200, Mike Hammill wrote:
>  Well, still no luck from my end.  Does anyone have even the
> slightest
>  idea if this works on a G3?  I received no response thus far. I realize
>  Fedora is moving away from PPC, but I was still hoping for a life-line.
>  I saw f7 demoed by a friend at work on a x86 machine and it was really
>  impressive.   
What exact OF version and disk setup do you have?

Please tar up /proc/device-tree.

The b&w are the earliest new-world based machines and there are a few OF
specific quirks that exist depending on h/w and firmware.

Paul

[Mike Hammill]

Paul Nasrat wrote:

>  What exact OF version and disk setup do you have? 
When I boot into OF, I get the following:
Apple PowerMac 1,1 1.1f4 BootROM built on 04/09/99 at 13:57:32
Copyright 1994-1999 Apple...
[...]
OpenFirmware 3.1.1

>  Please tar up /proc/device-tree. 
The information you requested is at:
http://www.pdc.kth.se/~mike/f7/
There you will find
device-tree.tar.gz   -- tar of /proc/device-tree
fstab                -- goes to the question of my disk setup
parted_dev_sda_print -- result of parted /dev/sda print
yaboot.conf          -- best generated by f7
yaboot.conf_gentoo   -- best generated by Gentoo 2007.0

One things that I didn't notice before is that Gentoo's yaboot.conf got 
the correct initrd while f7 has none.  (Obviously Gentoo's hda isn't 
going to work in f7's sda environment, but otherwise I think it might be 
closer to correct.  I'm not sure how to compare the device= line that 
Gentoo vs f7 generated, though.)

>  The b&w are the earliest new-world based machines and there are a
> few OF
>  specific quirks that exist depending on h/w and firmware. 
Yes, quite right.  Still, hope springs eternal....

Thanks for taking the time to check into this.

Best regards,
/Mike Hammill

[Mike Hammill]

Anything more I can provide on this problem?  Any thoughts, anyone?

Best regards,
/Mike

[Mike Hammill]

Thanks to recent advice from Paul...

>  OK looks like an ofpath bug - can you see if 1.3.14-rc2 at
>
>  http://yaboot.ozlabs.org/ 
  ... I have tried again to get an f7 installation to boot on my B&W G3. 
  Using the 1.3.14-rc2 version of yaboot suggested I have gotten further 
in that I don't get error messages any longer, but when I boot, I still 
get the "blinking folder", instead of the yaboot lead into my f7 
installation.

The steps I have tried so far are:

1. boot rescue CD
2. choose to mount my disk's f7 installation as /mnt/sysimage
(if you haven't been following this thread, this is a completely new 
installation.  No errors occurred on installation.)
3. cd /mnt/sysimage/tmp
4. download 1.3.14-rc2 of yaboot as suggested by Paul and unpack here in tmp
5. PATH_PREFIX=/mnt/sysimage/tmp/ybin 
/mnt/sysimage/tmp/ybin/yabootconfig --chroot /mnt/sysimage -b /dev/sda2

Thas is a slightly simplied version of what I had to do to avoid various 
error messages like getting the wrong version of cut, not finding 
nvsetenv, and trying to run /usr/sbin/mkofboot instead of 
/mnt/sysimage/tmp/ybin/mkofboot.  This was all pretty easy to change by 
modifying the scripts yabootconfig and mkofboot.  Everything seems to 
proceed correctly without error messages.  However, on reboot, I'm still 
stuck at the blinking folder.  Is there something more needed?  What 
else can I check on?

Thanks for the help!
/Mike