ppc64 (mac) netboot

[Roland McGrath]

Ages ago, I used to netboot my Mac G5 all the time.  
It's been a while since I've had any luck with that.  Help?

My server-side stuff still works, don't bother asking.

What I used to do is have the tftp'd file be yaboot.  It would tftp
yaboot.conf and present the menu items I set up.  One of these could be e.g.:

image=enet:,/fc/4/mac64/vmlinuz
	label=fc4-mac64
	initrd=enet:,/fc/4/mac64/ramdisk.image.gz
	append="maxcpus=1 ramdisk_size=8192"
	read-only

and this worked peachy.  I was able to get there by using the four-finger
salute at chime time and typing "boot enet:,", or by getting to the first
stage of on-disk yaboot and hitting 'n'.  I could even do it by holding 'n'
at chime time, or option and clicking the globe, and then type blind at the
yaboot command line while the screen stayed frozen in Macintoshy graphics
mode until the boot started.

I can still get my menu, but it never leads to a happy installer boot any
more (unless I want to reinstall FC4).  Maybe since FC5 or so.  At some
point, the netboot images changed from vmlinuz+initrd.img to the one
ppc64.img.  When I point yaboot at that, it tftp's it happily and then says:

... method 'load' failed 00000300

Can't read Elf e_ident/e_type/e_machine info


When I change the tftp server to deliver ppc64.img directly, I get (from OF):

Loading ELF

CLAIM failed
 ok

When I try 'n' at chime time or 'n' at on-disk yaboot stage 1, it just
blinks and fiddles for a few seconds and then either boots from disk or
goes into an endless loop of yaboot stage 1 prompts.  Once it showed me a
folder icon with a question mark in the center of the screen for a second.

Over the releases I've tried a newer yaboot from time to time, with no luck.

What's the story?  I would really like to be able to netboot a yaboot with
a configurable menu of options that can include installer boots.  That's
what I do for x86 machines with PXE, and that's what I was able to do for
the Mac before.


Thanks,
Roland