powerwave 604/150 notes

For the archives, here is how I booted my PowerComputing
PowerWave
604/150 today.  I have noted a wart in the installer.

Built distribution, release, iso-image using NetBSD-current
of a week
or two ago.

The PowerWave 604/150 booted on the serial console.  I
plugged in an
ADB keyboard.  I had to hit Option-Command(aka
"Splat"/"Cloverleaf")-O-F
*quickly*, before the chime was finished.  Eventually I set
auto-load? to
'false' for my convenience. 

Set real-base and load-base per instructions at
<http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/faq.html#ofw-lo
ad-base>.

Booted like so:

0 > boot scsi-int/sd3:,MACPPCINSTALLATIONOFWBOOT.XCF;1
/macppc/binary/kernel/netbsd_generic_md.gz

A strange thing happened during installation:

    Status: Command failed
    Command: /usr/sbin/installboot /dev/rsd0a
/usr/mdec/bootxx /boot
     Hit enter to continue
------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------
installboot: Can't write sector 0 of `/dev/rsd0a': Read-only
file system
installboot: Set bootstrap operation failed



 Okay, the first part of the procedure is finished.  Sysinst
has written a
 disklabel to the target disk, and newfs'ed and fsck'ed the
new partitions you
 specified for the target disk.

 The next step is to fetch and unpack the distribution
filesets.

 During the extraction process, what do you want to see as
each file is
 extracted?



                    lqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqk
                    x Select set extraction verbosity     x
                    x                                     x

So installboot purports to fail, but sysinst disagrees with
itself
whether it failed.

After installing, to boot into NetBSD I used the CD-ROM's
bootloader
like so:

0 > boot scsi-int/sd3:,MACPPCINSTALLATIONOFWBOOT.XCF;1

At the 'Boot:' prompt, I typed
'/macppc/binary/kernel/netbsd_generic.gz
-a'.  Of course, '-a' let me provide the right root
partition (sd0a),
swap, and such.

I was able to install a "partition zero"
bootloader like so:

# /usr/sbin/installboot /dev/rsd0c /usr/mdec/bootxx /boot

(I believe sysinst ought to use rsd0c instead of rsd0a,
too.)  Then I
could boot from OpenFirmware with this command, 'boot
scsi-int/sd0:,'.

So that I could boot by typing 'boot' at the OF prompt, I
did this:

0 > setenv boot-device boot scsi-int/sd0:0
0 > setenv boot-file netbsd
0 > reset-all

Finally, I set the system to auto-boot:

0 > setenv auto-boot? true
0 > reset-all

Works!

It seems that OpenFirmware tries to boot from the HDD before
it has spun
up, or something.  It complained ' can't OPEN:
scsi-int/sd0:0' after
I power-cycled the machine.  If I hit the reset button, it
booted up.
I fixed that with this command,

0 > setenv boot-command catch 5000 ms boot

Dave

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
dyoungojctech.com      Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933