Is a boot partition fully supported? [SOLVED BY MAGIC]

grazie · n00b Joined: 14 Nov 2005 Posts: 61

I've set up a machine with a boot partition as it's convenient for multiple Linux systems on the same machine.

Once booted, all is fine, but I've a couple of problems during the boot process. Firstly, I lose keyboard support at the yaboot menu, so I can't select anything, Then video output is lost when the default OS boots (Gentoo). Video output and keyboard support return as the kernel loads.

My keyboard, monitor and mouse are connected via a KVMA switch. If an Apple keyboard is connected directly there's no keyboard problem. I can't easily connect the monitor directly to the machine to test.

Setting up the bootstrap with the same config using Ubuntu doesn't give any problems. I've noticed a Ubuntu bootstrap partition is 977K as oppose to 800k for Gentoo.

killfire · l33t Joined: 04 Oct 2003 Posts: 618

not to be critical, but it works right?
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grazie · n00b Joined: 14 Nov 2005 Posts: 61

No it doesn't work because I certainly can't use it as it is. If someone said Gentoo on PPC doesn't support boot partitions due to XYZ - fair enough.

killfire · l33t Joined: 04 Oct 2003 Posts: 618

grazie · n00b Joined: 14 Nov 2005 Posts: 61

I can't select which OS I want to boot or see all the kernel messages (there might be a problem).

kritip · Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2006 11:55 am Post subject:

I don't see personally why it would cause problems?? Sounds more like you have some hardware support thats comiled as a module, and until its autoloaded during the bootup, the hardware doesn't work?! Seem feasible or have i got the wrong end of the stick

Kristian
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grazie · n00b Joined: 14 Nov 2005 Posts: 61

I don't know why either, as all I've done is copy the kernel images from /boot on root to the boot partition and amend /etc/yaboot.conf and /etc/fstab accordingly. The only module I load is eth1394, but there's no problems without the boot partition. A complete puzzle!

JoseJX · Developer Joined: 28 Apr 2002 Posts: 2751

Well, the no kernel messages on boot would either be a kernel issue (wrong framebuffer settings) or you're having it boot on the wrong console (specifying a serial console for instance). This is a seperate problem from the yaboot issue.

For the yaboot issue, which version of yaboot is ubuntu using? Is it different from the version you're using on Gentoo? Do they have any special patches that they haven't sent upstream? Does your keyboard work from openfirmware? (Hold down apple + option + o + f on boot)

There should be no difference with a "boot" partition, we just don't recommend that you use them because they're a little trickier to setup with yaboot config.
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grazie · n00b Joined: 14 Nov 2005 Posts: 61

Only posting this in case anyone is interested trying out a boot partition.

I don't know why, but I no longer have any problems. It would appear that after initially setting up the bootstrap from Gentoo, overwriting from Ubuntu caused no further problems. Overwriting the bootstrap from either distro works fine now. I still think the difference in size of the bootstrap partition needed by each distro is significant. Both distros are using yaboot tools v1.3.13 and the binary ybin is identical. However, I believe there must be some differences with patching though and I'd be interested in knowing if there's an easy way to find this out without having to difference the source code sets from each distro.

I'm sure I could reproduce the problem by zapping the bootstrap partition and recreating it from Gentoo, but unless any Gentoo developer/maintainer is at all interested, I'll not bother.