Re: Why it's so difficult to fix PowerMac booting for good
On Mon, 2023-05-29 at 13:40 +0200, Linux User #330250 wrote:
> On 05/29 2023 07:59 John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> > You're underestimating the number of times the GRUB package gets updated,
> > that happens a lot [1] which is why I don't think your suggestion to use a
> > static GRUB image is ever going to fly.
>
> I don't see that many GRUB version updates on Gentoo (on amd64). Maybe
> from twice to three times a year, but not more. For this purpose a
> version bump is from 2.04 to 2.06, but not from 2.06-12 to 2.06-13 if
> the specific binaries aren't any different (it's still version 2.06)
> Looking at https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grub/ version bumps are even rarer...
For one, Gentoo is not Debian. And secondly, you cannot just look at the
upstream sources since there are also many downstream changes in the Debian
package in the form of patches to fix compatibility issues, CVEs and so on.
> > What we need is a free implementation of the HFS(+) utilities which is what
> > I am trying to achieve now. This is the only proper solution as it integrates
> > with the design of debian-installer.
>
> Why are the respective packages maked "GPL-2" on Gentoo Linux then?
>
> * sys-fs/hfsplusutils
> Latest version available: 1.0.4-r3
> Latest version installed: 1.0.4-r3
> Size of files: 182 KiB
> Homepage: http://penguinppc.org/historical/hfsplus/
> Description: HFS+ Filesystem Access Utilities (a PPC filesystem)
> License: GPL-2
>
> * sys-fs/hfsutils
> Latest version available: 3.2.6_p15
> Latest version installed: 3.2.6_p15
> Size of files: 210 KiB
> Homepage: https://www.mars.org/home/rob/proj/hfs/
> Description: HFS FS Access utils
> License: GPL-2
Because I am talking about Apple's »diskdev_cmds« and »hfs« packages, not the ones
you mentioned above which are both dead upstream, by the way. Apple's packages are
APSL which Debian considers non-free, unfortunately [1].
> Only diskdev_cmds is APSL-2 licensed (which to my knowledge is
> considered a free license as well,
> https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/apsl.html):
>
> * sys-fs/diskdev_cmds
> Latest version available: 332.14_p1-r4
> Latest version installed: 332.14_p1-r4
> Size of files: 719 KiB
> Homepage: http://opendarwin.org
> Description: HFS and HFS+ utils ported from OSX, supplies mkfs
> and fsck
> License: APSL-2
Not by Debian, see [1]. If you feel like convincing the Debian Legal team that
APSL is DFSG-compatible, please go ahead. I have given up on this.
> Utilities included in hfsutils are:
> hattrib
> hcd
> hcopy
> hdel
> hdir
> hformat
> hfsck
> hls
> hmkdir
> hmount
> hpwd
> hrename
> hrmdir
> humount
> hvol
>
> So, hformat to create the HFS volume, hcopy and hattrib to populate it
> with the required boot files. And all is GPL-2 licensed...
> https://www.mars.org/home/rob/proj/hfs/
hfsutils works like mtools, it doesn't use the kernel's VFS layer. Tools like "fsck"
and "mkfs" are still on the TODO list as you can see in the TODO file [2], quote:
»* write Linux utilities mkfs.hfs, fsck.hfs«.
This is also the reason why the yaboot-installer in Debian used a workaround to format
the boot partition with HFS. Normally that would happen in the installer's partitioning
tool and not in grub-installer (or yaboot-installer).
> > Any other approaches like this hack to supply a static image would make things
> > much more complicated. In particular, I don't think the other maintainers within
> > debian-installer would be amused if I placed a static HFS image several hundred
> > megabytes inside into a udeb package that has currently an unpacked size of 168
> > kilobytes [2].
>
> Understood. Yes, having the hfs utilities available will definitely help
> a lot.
Just having a fully working »hfsprogs« under a DFSG-compatible license available would
solve all the problems with the bootloader installation on Apple PowerMac, including
making the whole process much more robust and also compliant with the remaining archi-
tectures.
Adrian
> [1] https://wiki.debian.org/DFSGLicenses#Apple_Public_Source_License_.28APSL.29
> [2] https://github.com/Distrotech/hfsutils/blob/master/TODO#L43
--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer
`. `' Physicist
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
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