FreeBSD 8.1-release on PowerBook G4 - is firewire disks supported?

[Paul Mather]

On Oct 9, 2010, at 7:29 PM, Torfinn Ingolfsen wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> Are firewire drives supported in FreeBSD 8.1-release on powerpc?
> 
> I am trying to install FreeBSD 8.1-release on a PowerBook G4[1] I have.
> The internal disk drive contains OS X, and will continue that way. So I
> am trying to install FreeBSD on an external drive I have, a Maxtor
> firewire drive.  This drive shows up both in OS X and in Open Firmware,
> but after booting the FreeBSD install image (disc1), it is nowhere to
> be seen.
> - there are no nodes in /dev for it (I used echo /dev/* to verify)
> - camcontrol devlist -v lists only the memory stick I am booting from
> - camcontrol rescan all doesn't change anything

I recently ran into the same problem.  Firewire support is built in to the kernel but not, I discovered, the sbp device support.  So, to get FireWire drives to show up, you need to "load sbp" from the FreeBSD boot loader.  The easiest way to do this is to press space when you get the countdown to booting the kernel from the FreeBSD boot loader.  This will drop you into the FreeBSD boot loader prompt.  Then, type "load sbp" followed by "boot" to boot FreeBSD.  The booted system will then recognise your external FireWire drive as a daX device.

Cheers,

Paul.