Booting FreeBSD/powerpc from external FireWire drive?

[Nathan Whitehorn]

On Fri, 1 Oct 2010 11:44:05 -0400
Paul Mather <paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu> wrote:

> I'm trying to install FreeBSD/powerpc{,64} on an external FireWire
> drive.  I've been successful in installing a 9-CURRENT snapshot.  The
> problem is that I don't know how to boot from this drive from
> OpenFirmware, given I also have Mac OS X installed on a separate hard
> drive---the internal hard drive that is the default boot drive.
> 
> Using a PowerBook G4, I was able to boot the external FW drive
> containing FreeBSD by holding down the Option key during startup and
> then choosing the FreeBSD drive from the list of bootable drives that
> is displayed.  Unfortunately, I want to use this external FW drive to
> boot into FreeBSD on an headless Xserve G5 via a serial console.
> Lacking the graphical boot drive chooser, I need to use the
> OpenFirmware "boot" command or set the boot-device in NVRAM to
> designate the external FW drive as the boot drive.
> 
> Can anyone help me figure out the appropriate OpenFirmware command to
> boot FreeBSD from the external FW drive?  The "devalias" command
> reports I have "fw" and "fwx" aliases, which I presume refer to
> FireWire.  Alas, I can't fathom what the boot command arguments would
> be.  I followed the gpart partitioning scheme listed in the
> FreeBSD/powerpc install instructions at
> http://people.freebsd.org/~nwhitehorn/ppcinstall.txt with an 800K
> apple-boot partition as the first one in the APM.
> 
> If it would make it easier, the external FW drive I have can also be
> used as a USB drive.  So, if it is easier to boot from an external
> USB, I could do that, if someone can tell me the appropriate boot
> arguments.

boot fw:,\\:tbxi or boot fw:,\ppc\boot1.elf might also work.
-Nathan