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Technical Q&A HW101
Was that a path I just saw?
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Q: Sometimes when booting the machine a small Mac
OS logo flashes on the screen with what looks like a path
below it. What does this indicate?
A: When Open Firmware looks for a boot device, it
first looks to see if any snag keys are held down. If there
are none, it looks at the environment variable
boot-device . If the device specified in
boot-device cannot boot the machine, Open
Firmware will begin a search for another boot device. If it
finds one that can boot the machine, it will flash the path
to the found device on the screen and proceed with booting
from the found device.
If Open Firmware cannot find a device to boot
from:
- On NewWorld machines, it will display a folder on the
screen and will alternately flash the Mac OS logo and a
question mark (?) on the folder.
- On older machines, it will display an icon of a floppy
disk with a flashing question mark. (?)
The device that actually booted the machine will be
reflected in
Devices:device-tree:options:boot-path .
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[Oct 06 2000]