Re: not releasing powerpc (Re: beta3 released)
On Wed, Mar 17, 2004 at 11:51:08AM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 17, 2004 at 09:31:06AM +0000, Colin Watson wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 16, 2004 at 09:59:14PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> > > Also, Colin said he would have a look at this this evening, so we will
> > > know tomorrow about it.
> >
> > OK, I built kernel-patch-2.4.25-powerpc without your postinst hack.
> > (Incidentally, this is just how it builds by default. If you want to
> > have a postinst hack, it *must* be in the source package or in a
>
> Yeah. I had been struggling with this stuff for more than 48 hours
> though, and also usually submit the patch to Manoj for inclusion in
> kernel-package.
>
> > build-dependency, not just a local change on your system, otherwise
> > people won't be able to rebuild it correctly. It would be very
> > embarrassing if a kernel security update broke d-i!)
>
> Well, as i usually build powerpc security kernels, ...
You also make it more difficult for people like me to try to help. A
patch in debian/ that gets applied to the postinst after it's installed
would do fine if hacks are needed, although not all that robust against
kernel-package changes: maybe just keeping your own fork of
image.postinst in debian/ would be more sensible. That's logically what
you're doing anyway.
> > It seems to install successfully:
>
> Ok, can you put them somewhere i can download them (i need the modules
> and the -chrp image) and i will give it a try.
http://riva.ucam.org/~cjwatson/tmp/kernel-patch-2.4.25-powerpc/
(please be nice to that, it's behind ADSL ...)
> > Setting up kernel-image-2.4.25-powerpc-pmac (2.4.25-2) ...
> > depmod: *** Unresolved symbols in /lib/modules/2.4.25-powerpc/kernel/drivers/sound/kahlua.o
> > /boot/vmlinux does not exist. Installing from scratch, eh?
> > Or maybe you don't want a symbolic link here. Hmm? Lets See.
> >
> > root@cairhien:/tmp# ls -l /boot/vmlinux
> > lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 Mar 17 09:11 /boot/vmlinux -> vmlinux-2.4.25-powerpc
> >
> > Can you clarify the problem with leaving the symlink code in? I don't
> > seem to be seeing it. If I can reproduce it then I stand more chance of
> > fixing it.
>
> This is in a d-i chroot ?
Yes.
Is the changelog for kernel-package 8.083 relevant here?
* Bug fix: "kernel-package: silent_modules should be YES on powerpc even
on first install of official images.", thanks to Sven
Luther. Accomodate the official powerpc kernel images to not prompt
even on initial install when /lib/modules/$version/ already
exists. This allows the separation of the modules from the kernel
image, since different powerpc subarches all require different images,
but can share the modules. (Closes: #230251).
> > This image puts the symlink in /boot/vmlinux. I think just /vmlinux
>
> No, i think not. It is often the case that /boot and / are not on the
> same partition, especially as some OF seem not to be able to boot from
> ext3/whatever file systems you use for /.
Hmm. Yes, I forgot that yaboot doesn't look this up when you run ybin in
the sort of way lilo does. How does grub handle this?
> > would be better, since that's what kernel-package does by default so
> > it'll be more compatible with people's locally-built kernels: my
> > locally-built kernels have been using /vmlinux without me giving any
> > special directions. However, if it stays as /boot/vmlinux then
> > yaboot-installer needs to be told about it.
>
> Do you know what filesystems yaboot is able to boot from.
[cjwatson@cairhien ~/src/packages/yaboot/yaboot-1.3.11/second]$ ls fs_*
fs_ext2.c fs_iso.c fs_of.c fs_reiserfs.c fs_xfs.c
(fs_of.c says "OpenFirmware supported filesystems".)
> Also remember that not everyone uses yaboot. What about quik for
> example ?
The fact that other boot loader installers may have to be changed to
have kernel symlinks in /boot doesn't alter the fact that
yaboot-installer has to be changed. :)
We don't have a quik-installer, anyway ...
> > > I think maybe it would be more interesting to fix yaboot-installer
> > > instead so it doesn't rely on the symlink being present, but fall back
> > > to using the real kernel in case the symlink is missing, this would
> > > add more robustness to the whole process.
> >
> > I'm not keen on that idea. The resulting system wouldn't be upgradeable
> > as smoothly if its yaboot.conf hardcoded the kernel-image version rather
> > than using the symlink, which would be an unexpected kick in the teeth
> > for people doing kernel security updates.
>
> Well, you could naturally have kernel-image postinst upgrade that file,
> as i guess it is done on native grub/lilo systems on x86. Not sure
> though.
No, it's not. lilo.conf uses /vmlinuz and is not altered by the
kernel-image postinst. grub is the same. Currently, yaboot works this
way too (although with /vmlinux rather than /vmlinuz, of course), and
it's excellent.
I'm not aware of any architecture where the boot loader's configuration
file is rewritten at install time. It would be pretty ugly.
> Anyway, current kernel-package is utterly broken with regard to powerpc,
> for example it doesn't know how to detect if you are on a old world or a
> new world machine, and thus if you need yaboot or quik.
Right, it detects this at build-time rather than run-time, which is
wrong since the pmac kernels work on both (as I understand it). How come
there's no bug filed about this?
> What are the exact requirement of yaboot in this area ?
What do you need beyond the above?
> And as said, i would very much like to get ride of kernel-package, and
> do it by hand.
Ugh. I don't think getting out of step with all the other architectures
is the way forward.
Cheers,
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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