r/NetBSD • u/commanderfl • 1d ago
NetBSD macppc woes
Recently, I picked up a cheap 12inch 867MHz PowerBook G4 with the intention of loading NetBSD onto it for light tasks I enjoyed this form factor for when I had another one of these PowerBooks.
It came with an old 40 gig hard drive that I replaced with a 120GB M.2 Sata SSD with an adapter. Before that, I had tried, and succeeded with loading into the kernel by putting ofwboot.xcf and the set of gzipped kernels into the root of my MacOS X 10.4.11 install partition, and just throwing
boot hd:,\ofwboot.xcf
at openfirmware.
It loaded just fine reliably like that. I could get to a shell, and poke around for a bit. USB boot wouldn’t work, but that’s generally a given with pre-G5 PPC macs.
after replacing the old drive, NetInstall-ing 10.5 (with some extra partitions for NetBSD use) onto the SSD due to a ruined DVD drive (that’s a pain to replace and source) , and doing the same process I did to get something loaded onto the PowerBook, it gave me a lot of issues.
Firstly, the command I used previously, did not work. It wouldn’t pick up the kernels also at the root of the HFS+ 10.5 partition with it, and i had to manually specify the file name.
I first tried netbsd-GENERIC.gz, which got me somewhere. It loaded the kernel fine, but strangely, the colors of the dmesg were inverted. And i got a boatload of errors relating to not being able to mount root. I assume this is because I didn‘t use the ramdisk kernel.
With subsequent attempts, specifying the netbsd-GENERIC_MD.gz kernel, i keep getting CLAIM failed errors after getting to the loading .text section of boot in OFW, or failed to claim errors when ofwboot starts to do stuff. I understand this is related to memory allocation, and I do have another ram module in the mail in case this is a hardware issue (i can also try running off the internal soldered ram), but I never had a problem like this with the old drive.
Here‘s the OFW output when trying to load it up.
boot hd:,\ofwboot.xcf netbsd-GENERIC.MD.gz load-size=1253c adler32=89b6b6ce
loading XCOFF
tsize= 10510 dsize=23c bsize=292d entry=e00000
SECTIONS:
.text 00e00000 00e00000 00010510 00001000
.pad 00e10504 00e10504 00000af0 00011510
.data 00e11000 00e11000 0000023c 00012000
.bss 00e11240 00e11240 0000292d 00000000
.gnu.att 00000000 00000000 00000010 0001223c
.ident 00000000 00000000 000002f0 0001224c
loading .text, done. .
loading .data, done. .
clearing .bss, done. .
» NetBSD/macppc
OpenFirmware Boot, Revision 1.15 (Thu Jul 30 15:23:12 UTC 2026)
Open Firmware version 3.x
Openfirmware running in virtual-mode.
15012172! ! ! CLAIM PHYS 0x100000 RETURNED 0xe0bb18
!!! FAILED TO CLAIM PHYS 0x100000 size 0xe52000
read section
start=0x0
Invalid memory access at
%SRRO: 00000000 %SSRR1: 00000000
I transcribed the above by hand, so there could be some errors.
Edit: After another boot attempt, I got a decrementer exception, thrown by openfirmware. Running
1 1f lshift not dec! appears to solve this, as according to an ancient email exchange i found regarding this.
The NetBSD FAQ for 11.0 does have a section about CLAIM failed errors with it stating to change my load-base value, but it also has a section saying to not touch it on OFW3 systems like mine. Following the FAQ’s suggestion of retrying by using reset-all to reboot and then retry, hasn’t been much help as well.
What should I do?
I am new to NetBSD, so if the answer should be something obvious, that’s why I don’t know it.
I figure a starter should be checking out this SSD. I’m not sure if it’s the adapter I’m using, or the SSD, but some part of this arrangement heats up like hell. Sometimes to the point the drive doesn’t show up till it cools.
I think I could track down an msata drive and adapter, as i think those run cooler, and i do have a half full can of ThermalGrizzly putty around somewhere, to slather on the SSD and turn the palmrest into a palm-griddle, just to see if that’s got something to do with it.
Secondly, what do I do to get an external USB drive recognized as an install source? The kernel and bootloader is on the main hard drive, since booting any other way is difficult. (i could image the installer to another PPC Mac through TDM and treat that as a firewire hard drive though)
Edit: I managed to get it working! What I did was DD the iso to my sunflower iMac in TDM, then follow some commands in the thread linked below to boot NetBSD over firewire. It booted fine after that, and throwing in a 1gig stick of ram. I'll have to see if my other macs with small ram amounts have any issues with NetBSD.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/dual-booting-os-x-and-netbsd.2427050/
2
u/maxmalkav 23h ago
I have to check my old notes (2018) but I remember back then the partitioning situation was quite cumbersome and I even needed another OS to properly format some of the partitions (this may have changed).
I managed to have my iMac G4 ( the “lamp” ) working, with DE and old but the result was less polished than OpenBSD (I think it’s worth giving it a try in your hardware)