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Migrating to a new HDD

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2015 5:39 pm
by Raziel
I'm planning to...so here's a few questions i'm still uncertain of

I still *need* an FFS partition where i install the amigaboot.of, so that CFE can init the boot process...correct?

1) What does this .of hold, is the one from the AmigaOS 4.1 FE install CD the latest and is there a chance that it will grow bigger in size over time/new OS versions?
2) Why do i have an amigaboot.of on my main sys: partition when it isn't accessed from there?
3) How big should the partition that holds amigaboot.of be (amigaboot.of is roughly 52KB in size here)?
4) Why is there still the limitation of having to use an FFS partition to boot from and not i.e. SFS...i guess the limitation lies in CFE, correct?
5) If the FFS partition corrupts, can i easily reformat and recopy the amigaboot.of from the AmigaOS 4.1 FE install CD?

Thanks a lot in advance

Re: Migrating to a new HDD

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2015 7:11 pm
by ZeroG
I still *need* an FFS partition where i install the amigaboot.of, so that CFE can init the boot process...correct?
Yes.
1) What does this .of hold, is the one from the AmigaOS 4.1 FE install CD the latest and is there a chance that it will grow bigger in size over time/new OS versions?
It should contain code to load the kickstart, the one from the FE install CD is the latest and of course it could grow bigger for newer versions.
2) Why do i have an amigaboot.of on my main sys: partition when it isn't accessed from there?
Well, the extra partition for the .of is just a option... I think it is a good idea to have it on sys: too.
3) How big should the partition that holds amigaboot.of be (amigaboot.of is roughly 52KB in size here)?
If the partition that holds the .of is not sys: 5MB should be more than enough, even if it grows in the future.
4) Why is there still the limitation of having to use an FFS partition to boot from and not i.e. SFS...i guess the limitation lies in CFE, correct?
Yes, it's a CFE limit.
5) If the FFS partition corrupts, can i easily reformat and recopy the amigaboot.of from the AmigaOS 4.1 FE install CD?
Yes.

Re: Migrating to a new HDD

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2015 7:30 pm
by jaokim
Great questions, great answers! Cleared out how things works.
Should be put in the wiki.

Re: Migrating to a new HDD

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2015 8:53 pm
by sundown
Raziel wrote:I'm planning to...so here's a few questions i'm still uncertain of

1) What does this .of hold, is the one from the AmigaOS 4.1 FE install CD the latest and is there a chance that it will grow bigger in size over time/new OS versions?

It contains FS support info, so if a new FS comes out, it would be added, so it would grow a little. Just make a 1MB FFS partition for amigaboot.of

2) Why do i have an amigaboot.of on my main sys: partition when it isn't accessed from there?

Its a backup in case your HD goes South or if you're adding a new boot drive, otherwise its not used, unless you decide to make the first partition an FFS system partition.

3) How big should the partition that holds amigaboot.of be (amigaboot.of is roughly 52KB in size here)?

1MB should be safe, thought I found it hard to make it with Media Toolbox on a 1TB drive. I ended up changing the higher cyl setting to get it to a small size.

Re: Migrating to a new HDD

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2015 11:29 pm
by tonyw
Just adding my two centavos:

"amigaboot.of" is the new loader and replaces "slb_v2" for all new machines. It runs on CFE (X-1000) and U-Boot (X-5000) machines and does not have to be "installed" the way slb_v2 did. "amigaboot.of" must be in the FIRST partition on the disk (it won't be read from anywhere else). Thus you could have the first partition as a fulll system install (as long as amigaboot.of appears in the root), or just as a small partition holding amigaboot.of only. That first partition must be FFS as that's all that CFE can understand.

"slb_v2" is these days used only for the old SE/XE and SAMs.

Re: Migrating to a new HDD

Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2015 6:59 am
by Raziel
@all

:-)

Thank you very much for the answers