Re: how can I boot powerpc with grub?

[Christoph Plattner]

Currently there is no way to use GRUB for booting on non-intel-x386
machines. I hope, GRUB becomes a multi-platform project one day, but
currently it is design to use ix86 BIOS functionality.

But GRUB has a layered design (which must be improved ...), so it is
not impossible to do adaptatios to other platforms (using other low
level routines).

BUT: GRUB has also to deal with BIG/LITTLE ENDIAN problems. Currently
it is "hardcoded" to little endian, handling the disk blocks, and
headers, etc...

And there is a further point:
The PC is very compatible to another PC, you use the same mechanisms,
the same kind of consoles, etc, etc ...

On the PowerPC one machine differs very much from another machine. There
is not a defined layer (like the BIOS) between hardware and "primitive"
boot loaders. So the boot loaders have to handle much setup stuff.

Also the PowerPC-CPUs are quite different. The standards in the 
POWER class lets many things open and is target-specific. Even 
page/segment setups may differ a little bit, especially accessing
I/O hardware.

I played a little bit with PowerPC and I studied the setup code
of a Linux kernel for a special board, it is quitw a set of C-files
to boot up specific board.

What kind of PowerPC do you use ?

In general have a look at 
        ppcboot.sourceforge.net
an open source boot loader for PowerPC. Not as convenient as GRUB,
but a quite professional loader prepared for many target platforms.
I have a PowerPC board of MEN (German company) and there a boot 
loader "MenMon" is used (which also supports PPC-Boot images).
The PPCBoot or especially the image format gets a standard ...

With friendly regards
Christoph P.


WANGWEI wrote:
> 
> hello:
> I have a PowerPC running Turbo Linux
> 
> how can I boot it with grub ?
> 
> thanks
> 
> 
> 
> 

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