Solved Auto-reboot a G4 Mac Mini after power failure?

ClayS

ClayS

I installed 10.3 on an ancient G4 Mac Mini I happened to have sitting around, and it is doing very well. Only problem is that I am trying to use it as a router and it will not restart after a power failure. All my research has only brought up ways to set it to restart under Linux or OS X. Can anyone recommend a way I can set it to do so under FreeBSD?
 
This article (http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2013/02/enable-auto-startup-after-power-failure.html) mentions that you can do it from Ubuntu with setpci -s 0:1f.0 0xa4.b=0. Maybe pciconf -w -b pci0:0:1f:0 0xa4 0 will work on FreeBSD?

I don't if the device name is correct, check pciconf -lv if it does not work. According to https://smackerelofopinion.blogspot.de/2011/09/mac-mini-rebooting-tweaks-setpci-s-01f0.html it needs to be a device similar to
Code: 
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
EDIT: Ah it's a PPC Mac Mini, so this is probably not going to work...
 
I wonder if the PPC version of FreeBSD has some tools for modifying the firmware settings at run time?
 
Yes, the problem is that it isn't an Intel machine. From what I can find about PPC machines, there is nothing to set in the Open Firmware settings to make this happen. For Linux, the command:

echo 'server_mode=1' > /proc/pmu/options

Works but doesn't persist across reboots. Maybe there is nothing quite like that in FreeBSD? I am hoping that isn't the case.
 
Let me try this again. There is pmu(4) which mentions:
Code: 
dev.pmu.%d.server_mode
        Restart after power failure behavior (1 causes system to reboot
        after power cut, 0 causes system to remain off).
So it's likely as simple as adding dev.pmu.0.server_mode=1 to /etc/sysctl.conf.
 
For reference, you can break a PPC mac into the Open Firmware command line by holding down Cmd+Opt+O+F at the start of the boot sequence, until you get an "ok" prompt from OF. From there, you can do interactive things like set-defaults, printenv, setenv, etc. The OF interactive shell and nvramrc are a specialised implementation of Forth, and when compiled is known as FCode.

I've not checked for a while, but I don't think that Apple ever gave a great deal of reference material for OF. Much of Sun's (they call it OpenBoot) reference material for it should apply in general. OF is also used by numerous others, including IBM and NetApp.
 
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