FreeBSD 7 Install on an older Mac Mini

[Colin Dick]

Hello again,
  Well, it has been a couple weeks and I had a couple positive responses that if I can just get FreeBSD installed, the
rest of the maintenance should be quite similar to i386 based systems, so I have tried again.
  I saw a few posts from Garance A Drosihn <drosih at rpi.edu> that seemed to have useful information, however, I still
cannot seem to get this system installed.

I boot with a Mac Install 10.3.7 disk (my 10.4.5 install disk kernel panics)
I enter the Installer -> Open Disk Utility system
I select my drive (37.3 GB TOSHIBA MK4025GAS
I select the Partition option and choose
  Volume Scheme: 1 partition
  Name: FreeBSD
  Format: Unix File System
  Size 37.26GB
  Click the "Partition" option
  Confirm that I understand information will be destroyed
    This disk has 1 volume: "disk0s3"
    Click "Partition"
It seems to do its thing (Creating Partition Map) to create the slice
  It does not include the OFW partition fortunately which I think is disk0s2??
  So, I now have a blank slice I think
Quit Disk Utility
Quit Installer [Quit]
Boot to OFW and 'eject cd'
I boot the FreeBSD 7.0 disk (PPC bootonly ISO)
Run through the initial screens to select country etc...
Sysinstall asks to create partitions and recognizes ad0 (s2 is OWM 8MB I think and s3 38145M)
  so I use the default "A"
    512 /
    2020 SWAP
    2034 /usr
    512 /tmp
    33066 /usr
I choose Developer install without ports
I choose FTP media for install
My machine is online and initially tries to make new root filesystem
  After awhile, "Error mounting /dev/ad0s3 on /mnt : Operation not permitted [OK]
  Unable to mount the root file system on /dev/ad0s3! Giving up. [OK]
  Couldn't make filesystems properly. Aborting. [OK]
  In the F2 console
    /dev/ad0s3: 38145.8MB (78122672 sectors) block size 16384, fragment size 2048
        using 208 cylinder groups of 183.72MB, 11758 blks, 23552 inodes.
    super-block backups (for fsck -b #) at:
      There are a bunch of numbers here....

  That is as far as it gets.  What am I not understanding?  What am I doing wrong?  This seems to be the same thing that
happens whether I boot with the install disk and create the (blank) partition or if I try to install over the existing
MacOS X?
  It was interesting playing with this Mac with no Mac experience.  Neat tricks I had to learn were how to eject the
disk when the machine couldn't/would boot or when I didn't have my mouse hooked up.  I ended up booting to OpenFirmware
(alt+cmd+o+f after my wireless microsoft keyboard was sync'd) and then issuing 'eject cd'.  This has certainly been a
bit of a frustrating learning experience... but I think I am making progress and quite interested now in completing this
challenge.

--
Colin

On Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:00:14 +1100, Horst Günther Burkhardt III wrote
> On Mon, 2009-01-05 at 08:37 -0800, Colin Dick wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >   I have been lurking in this list for a few months now and it seems that the posts cover pretty advanced topics.  Or at
> > least they seem to be advanced topics to me.  I am wanting to load FreeBSD onto one of these:
> > 
> > http://support.apple.com/kb/SP65 (the 1.25GHz model upgraded to 1G of RAM)
> > 
> >   My intention is to replace a larger PC running Linux that is on its last legs with this small machine running FreeBSD
> > 7.  I run a number of FreeBSD servers but all on the i386 platform.  I thought if I could get it to load, the rest would
> > be the same?
> >   It seems like I can boot the initial FreeBSD 7 disk and walk through the initial configuration (except for the section
> > for slicing the drive).  I can pick my partitions etc... however, when install goes to start, the partitions are not
> > found?  I have read that it has something to do with the location of the boot manager or where the loader is or
something?
> > 
> >   I think I am learning now that this concept is not for the faint of heart and that I might be better to just give up
> > and find a new i386 machine to port my web/mysql/email/dns servers to.  Just looking for some feedback from this forum
> > what my best options might be.  Does anyone know of another forum, maillist, resource for people who are running
> > PPCFreeBSD as hosting servers?  Thanks in advance.
> > 
> > --
> > Colin Dick
> 
> Hey Colin,
> 
> Welcome to the list :)
> 
> You are correct in that when you can get FreeBSD to load, it will be
> pretty much the same as FreeBSD/i386 - the only difference is you'll
> need to compile things because basically the packages aren't compiled as
> much for ppc (due to lack of hardware and cpu time as i understand
> it)... this shouldn't be an issue for you.
> 
> No, the install isn't for the faint of heart, but thankfully the people
> on the -ppc list have been (in my experience) welcoming and exceedingly
> helpful. You should have an ok time getting FreeBSD running if you just
> have a little patience.
> 
> FreeBSD-PPC as a hosting platform is no different to FreeBSD-i386 as a
> hosting platform, all the software is the same. If you want help,
> ##FreeBSD on the freenode IRC network will help you with general
> questions, and you may find some use hanging around bsdforums.
> 
> Some notes:
> 
> When compiling things, if you optimise for the 7455 chip in your
> computer, you will need to include
> 
>  /---------------------------------------------------------------------
> |     -march=7450 -mtune=7455 -mno-altivec
>  \---------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> in your CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS - as the kernel does not yet understand
> Altivec instructions the ommission of -mno-altivec will cause Bad [UTF-8?]Shitâ„¢
> to happen.
> 
> In order to partition your disk, you'll want to use the debian 4.0
> netinst disc for mac, and set up as mac format partition tables. 
> Another option is to use Parted on a livecd like Finnix.
> 
> The bootloader installation will require you to compile hfstools, unless
> you have a -CURRENT tree which has a small hfs filesystem image in it
> (as I understand it from stuff Nathan Whitehorn posted)
> 
> This is just stuff from the lists that I ran across, it may hopefully
> spare you _some_ trouble.
> 
> If you have any questions, just ask on the list and someone more skilled
> (infinitely more skilled) than I can answer and help you :)
> 
> Once again, welcome, and I hope you enjoy the ride! :D
> 
> -- Horst.