Re: Debian Installer GRUB test image available

[John Ogness]

On 2019-05-11, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> If you find some time, I think it would be interesting if we had a
>>> grub-boot test image where BootX is using:
>>>
>>> <BOOT-SCRIPT>
>>> boot &device;:,\System\Library\CoreServices\grub.elf
>>> </BOOT-SCRIPT>
>>>
>>> I suspect Apple users would then be able to "properly" boot from USB
>>> with:
>>>
>>> boot usb0/disk:,\\:tbxi
>> 
>> Well, I can do a test build if you like with the file manually edited.
>> 
>> If that fixes the USB issue, we can just send a patch to GRUB upstream
>> to fix the issue just before the release.
>
> I have done this now. Please try the following test image:
>
>> https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/grub-test/debian-10.0-powerpc-grub-new-NETINST-1.iso

Thank you for creating that image. Unfortunately it does not do as I
expected on my iBook G4. Despite the BootX boot script containing:

<BOOT-SCRIPT>
boot &device;:,\System\Library\CoreServices\grub.elf
</BOOT-SCRIPT>

When trying to boot the ISO from USB stick using the OF command:

boot usb0/disk:,\\:tbxi
   or
boot usb0/disk:,\\BootX

it still yields an error and shows that it tried:

boot usb0/disk::,\System\Library\CoreServices\grub.elf

(notice the double ":").

Manually booting grub with the OF command:

boot usb0/disk:,\System\Library\CoreServices\grub.elf
    or
boot usb0/disk:,\\grub.elf

works. I had assumed that the extra ":" was coming from "&partition;"
but that does not seem to be the case.

I still believe specifying "&partition;" for an MSDOS partition table is
incorrect because specifying a partition number invokes mac-parts, which
is then unable to read the MSDOS partition table. (Using &partition; for
the _installed_ grub works correctly because in that case we have an
Apple partition table.)

I will continue to investigate why the double colon is showing up and do
some experimentation with different values to better understand how the
iBook G4 firmware is handling the MSDOS partition table.

John Ogness