Mac mini and FreeBSD - some initial details

[Peter Grehan]

Hi Garance,

>     b) Boot into OSX and copy /boot/loader from the miniinst CD
>        into / on OSX. Reboot, break into OpenFirmware, and
> 
>            0 > boot hd:loader hd:11
> 
> I couldn't get the second one to work for me.  In my case, I have
> a MacOS 10 install on hd #9, with freebsd on hd #5.  The following
> did seem to work:
> 
>            0 > boot hd:9,loader hd:5

  The "hd:" without a partition number signifies the default bootable 
partition on the drive. The value can be seen at the OFW prompt with

0 > printenv boot-volume

  .. and the contents found with:

0 > dir hd:

  Also, try:

0 > printenv boot-device

  On my Powerbook, this is "hd:,\\:tbxi", which means to go to the 
default directory ('\\') on the default partition, and load the file of 
type 'tbxi'.

> I have tried to come up with some kind of trick where I could select
> a MacOS 10 partition, and have the machine boot up the freebsd boot
> loader instead of the MacOS 10 kernel, but none of those tricks have
> worked...

  I haven't mucked around too much with this, but I suspect you need a
Forth script similar to src/release/powerpc/boot.tbxi which would
live on the default boot partition. Then, you could setenv the
'boot-command' variable in OpenFirmware to boot with this file.

later,

Peter.