Re: Centris 650 Debian 10 SID Installation
On Wed, 12 Jun 2019, userm57@yahoo.com wrote:
> On 6/10/19 9:32 PM, userm57@yahoo.com wrote:
> > On 6/10/19 7:20 PM, Finn Thain wrote:
> >>
> >> Why not use the serial console?
> >>
>
> I was able to install a text-only installation on the Centris 650 using
> the serial console ("console=ttyS0,9600n8").
Nice work!
> It's not necessary to hit "1"; the installation screen eventually comes
> up.
>
> Here are a few observations and comments:
>
> 1) Approximate times were as follows:
> a) 30 min - from initial setup to prompting of a Debian mirror.
> b) 4 hrs - from start of scan of Debian mirror to "popcon" prompt.
> c) 5 hrs - from "popcon" prompt to completion of loading packages.
> d) 3 hrs - from selection of "openssh server" and "system utilities"
> to completion of installation.
>
That sure makes debootstrap look good. On fast amd64 system packages are
unpacked a lot faster, of course. Stage 2 still happens on the target m68k
system. The --include and --exclude options might be helpful if you're
changing over to sysvinit or openrc.
> 2) After installation, the system was rebooted after a prompt. A
> question mark appeared on the main screen. Booting from an external
> disk, Mac OS volumes could be mounted manually using "Disk Utility", but
> they were still not seen after a reboot. The problem was fixed by
> running "Apple HD SC Setup 7.3.5p" and updating the Apple driver on the
> affected disk. So it seems likely that something in the installation
> corrupted the Apple driver.
>
Seems so. Is that a parted bug (which could be reproduced outside of the
installer)? Or is the installer expected to clobber existing partitions
(if you don't skip the repartitioning step)?
> 3) Booting into the new Linux installation using a 5.x kernel, the
> kernel crashed after not finding a valid init. As it turns out, if a
> separate /usr is specified during the installation, then the system
> won't boot, because /usr won't be mounted yet and the following
> directories are symbolic links:
>
> /bin -> usr/bin
> /lib -> usr/lib
> /sbin -> usr/sbin
>
> I realize that most users will probably just use a single filesystem for
> everything, but there have always been compelling reasons to use
> separate root and usr partitions. At any rate, if it doesn't work to
> specify separate partitions, then the installer should warn about that
> (or maybe have a "Root & Usr" partition option like NetBSD does and then
> not allow specification of a separate /usr partition).
>
I never use a separate /usr as I don't get any benefit. But it seems to me
that those symlinks would not be a problem when using Debian's initrd.
> 4) After booting into a backup partition (Debian 3.1) and backing up "/"
> and "/usr" from the new installation, and then restoring everything to a
> single "/" filesystem, the new system booted using the kernel (and
> initrd) that were created during the installation.
>
How did you avoid the ADB keymap problem?
> 5) The system never reached multiuser mode; the startup sequence looped
> on "Starting Network Time Synchronization" (see attached console log
> "Centris_650-Debian_10.txt"). The systemd timeout for this task was 1
> min 30 sec, but it never succeeded within that limit (I let it try 10
> times before forcing a reboot). I'll try other things, including single
> user mode and checking whether I can increase the limit somehow, or
> possibly disable network time synchronization temporarily.
>
I've seen that happen in Aranym (with no network interface). I find it
baffling that systemd would cripple the entire system merely because
network time sync failed. I don't know whether it is a bug or a design
decision. I prefer to think it is an old bug.
IMHO these log messages are a bit silly --
[ **] (3 of 3) A start job is running for /dev/sda4 (1min 5s / 1min 36s)
...
[ TIME ] Timed out waiting for device /dev/sda4.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for /dev/sda4.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for Swap.
...
Activating swap /dev/sda4...
...
[ 450.650000] Adding 524284k swap on /dev/sda4. Priority:-2 extents:1 across:524284k FS
...
[ OK ] Activated swap /dev/sda4.
Years ago when I tried systemd on a Mac LC III, the serial console device
unit timed out, so no getty was started for that console...
It will be interesting to see how much more quickly you can boot this
system using openrc or sysvinit. (I see that the 450 seconds logged here
includes the 100 second delay caused by CONFIG_CRYPTO_DH; you can avoid
that by adding initcall_blacklist=dh_init to the kernel parameters.)
> Thanks to all who are working so hard to keep it possible to install a
> modern GNU/Linux system on 30-year-old hardware!
>
You're welcome. It wouldn't be possible without testers like yourself!
--
> -Stan
>
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