Bug#447755: Minidisk support

[Frans Pop <elendil@planet.nl>]

On Thursday 24 December 2009, Stephen Powell wrote:
> Do you want me to use the production (Lenny) installer?  Or do you want
> me to use the "daily build" from Squeeze to do the installs?

The Squeeze installer would be best as that has up-to-date kernel and 
libparted. Unfortunately the "official" daily builds are not available 
(server down), but I've built a current generic image you can use:
http://people.debian.org/~fjp/tmp/d-i/s390_091224/

> After installing parted (Version 1.8.8.git.2008.03.24-11.1, remember
> this is a production Lenny system) I now get:
>
> odocdeb1:~# parted /dev/dasdb print
> Error: /dev/dasdb: unrecognised disk label

OK. This is a real problem. Apparently libparted in Lenny simply does not 
support these disks. And as libparted is the foundation on which partman 
is built, this needs to be addressed first (and will probably solve the 
basic support problem).

We need to verify that the Squeeze (testing) version of parted still has 
the same issue before reporting it.

Please do the following:
- start the squeeze installer
- when you have switched to SSH, change the debconf priority to "medium"
- use the option "Download installer components" to install parted-udeb
- proceed to partman; when you get the main partman display take a
  screenshot (just copy and paste from your SSH session) and then back up
  to the menu
- start a shell and give the output from
  - ls /dev/dasd*
  - grep . /sys/bus/ccw/devices/<dev>/*
  - grep . /sys/block/dasdX/*
  - parted /dev/dasdX print
- save the partman log (you can use the "Save debug logs" option) and
  attach gzipped

> For a CMS-format disk on an ECKD device, the first two physical blocks
> are IPL records.  The third physical block (cylinder 0, head 0, record
> 3) is the CMS disk label, whose exact
> format I can supply if you need it.  (On an FBA DASD, the second
> block is the disk label.  That's physical block 1, counting from 0.)
> The first four bytes of the label are "CMS1" in EBCDIC, which is
> X'C3D4E2F1'  The next six bytes are the volume serial number in EBCDIC.
> For example, if the volser is "DEB200", that would be X'C4C5C2F2F0F0'.
> The other fields I can get for you if you need it.

That's useful info for the parted maintainers.

Cheers,
FJP

FYI, on my Hercules system 'parted <device> print' gives from D-I:
# parted /dev/dasda print
Model: IBM S390 DASD drive (dasd)
Disk /dev/dasda: 2462MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: dasd

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Flags
 1      98.3kB  2000MB  2000MB  ext3         
 2      2000MB  2462MB  462MB   linux-swap

The first two errors are probably due to an old parted issue.