Installation preparation questions

[Nathan Whitehorn]

Ross Gohlke wrote:
>> Hi Ross,
>>
>>     
>>> My six year-old TiBook is still more reliable (and better outfitted)
>>> than
>>> some recent i386 laptops I've used. I can't wait to give it to my Mom as
>>> a
>>> starter Internet terminal - as soon as I can install PC-BSD on it!
>>>       
>>   I don't want to burst your bubble, but the FreeBSD/ppc install
>> currently makes NetBSD's install look like PC-BSD :(
>>     
>
> Maybe I'm just really bad at finding the right BSD documentation. I
> wrestled with NetBSD on a PowerMac G4 a while back and gave up. I am not a
> hardware guy, and fiddling with system-level settings is something I would
> rather avoid. Monitor frequency? Give me a break!
>
> I have been able to boot FreeBSD/ppc Installer CD (downloaded from
> ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/powerpc/, burned using Disk Utility,
> booted holding down C) on a PowerMac G4, an iBook G4 and a Powerbook G4.
> And there waiting for me is good old sysinstall.
> Pull up
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/using-sysinstall.html.
> >From there it's as easy or hard as any FreeBSD install.
> What am I missing?
>   
The thing that you are missing is that (a) sysinstall can't partition 
disks on PowerPC, and (b) the boot loader needs to be installed onto an 
HFS partition by hand. You will likely need MacOS for this. This is in 
common with the most annoying bits of the NetBSD install.

I believe Marcel's gpart work can fix the partitioning issue, but the 
boot loader thing won't go away unless and until FreeBSD acquires 
in-kernel HFS support. There was a port of the Darwin HFS module back in 
the 5.3 days, but it has suffered badly from bit rot with all the VFS 
changes since then.
-Nathan