Re: Debian installer: partman-prep

[Cajus Pollmeier <cajus@naasa.net>]

Am 23.12.2004 um 07:23 schrieb Sven Luther:

> On Wed, Dec 22, 2004 at 06:27:11PM +0100, Cajus Pollmeier wrote:
> > Am Mittwoch, 22. Dezember 2004 14:24 schrieb Colin Watson:
> > > On Wed, Dec 22, 2004 at 01:40:20PM +0100, Cajus Pollmeier wrote:
> > > > I've prepared a partman-prep package which should add support for 
> > > > PPC
> > > > PReP boot partitions to the installer. The package has been forked 
> > > > from
> > > > partman-palo. Now, short before testing, I'm wondering about the
> > > > mechanism which takes care about loading this module.
> > > >
> > > > I've grep'ed through the complete installer source, but got stuck in
> > > > the partman code. So - what do I have to do, that the partman-prep 
> > > > udeb
> > > > gets loaded on installation time?
> > >
> > > Same as partman-newworld: Priority: standard is enough to have it
> > > installed automatically. Make sure to use proper Architecture: and
> > > XB-Subarchitecture: fields to make sure it's not installed where it's
> > > inappropriate, and if necessary an isinstallable file in the control
> > > area.
> >
> > Ah - thanks for your answer. I didn't set the XB-Subarchitecture 
> > field,
> > because it wasn't set in the control file. In case of the newworld 
> > example,
> > I can't find where powermac_newworld comes from. What to do if I only
> > want to have this loaded when using the pseries flavor added by me in
> > the linux-kernel-di-powerpc's kernel-versions file?
>
> It is from archdetect which comes from the ddetect .udeb. We need to 
> add
> support for your hardware there. Can you give us the /proc/cpuinfo of 
> those
> machines, so we can identify it properly ?

Sure will do or will send patches for archdetect.

> In any case partman-prep should be installed on all of the IBM 
> machines : all
> prep (even ppcbug i think), IBM chrps and the newer pseries and what 
> not.

[...]

> > While looking for the way to set the correct subarch, I found that in
> > base-installer's postinst, line 438 the CPU variable is filled by:
> >
> > CPU=`grep '^cpu[[:space:]]*:' /proc/cpuinfo | cut -d: -f2 | sed 's/^ 
> > *//; s/[, ].*//' | tr A-Z a-z`
> >
> > The following case doesn't seem to work with more than one CPU. In
> > my case CPU contains "power4+ power4+".
>
> Where did you find it ?

As written above in the base-installer source package, file 
debian/postinst,
line 438 ;-) Its the point where the installer chooses the perfect 
kernel for
the installation. I had to add a "case" for power4+|power5+ and set the
flavor to pseries. Maybe this should be renamed to ibmppc, because it
applies to iSeries and the other IBM ppc machines, too.

Greetings,
Cajus