| This is the old basic ofboot.b wrapper, it has been replaced by a more |
| robust CHRP script that is able to dual or tri-boot GNU/Linux, MacOS, |
| and MacOS X. See README.ofboot.b for more information. |
| |
| OpenFirmware on newworld macs by default searches for HFS partitions |
| with a `blessed' directory, and then checks for a file with an HFS |
| filetype of `tbxi' if found it loads this file. Unfortunately OF is |
| being far to picky about the format of this file, while it will load a |
| ELF executable just fine when directed to, if the tbxi file it finds |
| is just a plain ELF executable, as yaboot is, then it refuses to load |
| it. |
| |
| The best longterm solution is to embed a small CHRP boot script to the |
| head of of the yaboot executable, but until we can find the right way |
| to do that we can use a small wrapper instead. The file included |
| called simple_ofboot.b does nothing more then run the OF command "boot |
| hd:,\\yaboot" which should load the yaboot executable on most machines |
| if you use the stock internal hard disk. You might have to change |
| that device path (hd:) to match the device path to your bootstrap |
| partition, such as hd:2,\\yaboot. Or you can dispense with the |
| wrapper altogether and reset the boot-device variable in OF to point |
| directly at the yaboot executable and that will work too. This |
| wrapper just allows for most (hopefully) machines to boot |
| transparently without any OF reconfiguration. |
| |
| If you have G4 hardware then your OpenFirmware may already have a |
| graphical boot selector built in, this selector can be accessed by |
| holding down the option key when booting the machine. You should see |
| a screen with buttons for each bootable partition. This version of |
| ofboot.b includes a badge icon, the button with a penguin icon is your |
| bootstrap partition. If you decide to use this built in selector you |
| really do not need to use the menu_ofboot.b script provided in this |
| package. Thanks to Nicholas Humfrey for creating the Badge icon. |
| |
| Hopefully soon these problems will have better solutions at some |
| point. If you happen to know OF well and have any suggestions they are |
| most welcome! |