D-I build / initial test on powerpc
I built d-i on a stable powerpc machine, first installing the build
dependencies (in build/control) from sid.
libpopt0 (needed for pump-udeb) also needed to be upgraded to sid, the
stable version was insufficient. (I'm not sure if it should become a
bulid dependency as a result.)
I completed the build for powerpc, of course there is no hope for
floppies with our 2.4 kernel:
Total system 1.9M (964k libs)
Initrd 720k
Kernel 3236k
Next I tried make demo, keep in mind that I have no idea what I'm
doing here; if my comments are ignorable, please do so ...
For the first make demo, I got
Cannot open template file /var/lib/cdebconf/templates.dat
However, that file was there when I executed a shell immediately
afterward. It must be created there after its absence is first
detected. Perhaps wait to report the error until the fix is tried?
The opening statement for the shell mentions nano, but nano is not
actually present. Is there even a pager? I didn't know how to check
the contents of templates.dat. I finally grepped it for Name:
and saw modules for anna, debconf, debian-installer, di-utils-shell,
mirror and netcfg.
What is the proper command to exit the shell and re-enter the main
menu? I typed exit in the shell and the demo stopped.
Next I tried DHCP config. It detected a tunl0 interface, but admitted
it was an unknown interface. It gave me a choice between that and eth0,
Shouldn't eth0 be defaulted?
The subst netcfg/confirm_dhcp hostname returned an error:
20 incorrect number of arguments
I suspect it just needs a <none>.
Next I'm asked if the interface, hostname, domain, nameservers, and
dhcp_hostname are correct. I answered no, because only the interface
was correct (the rest were blank/<none>, and I was bounced back to the
interface question. I guess, if only the interface has been chosen, as
happens when using dhcp, then only the interface should be in the
confirmation list. Then I would have answered yes, which takes me to
the next step.
pump was successful initializing eth0. On my machine, I get
3 messages from eth0 spewing after the Prompt: 1-4> line has
already been displayed, telling me that the link is up. This
would be confusing to some; is there some way to delay the prompt
until after eth0 has had its say?
After choosing the retriever (choice 1 of 1), I tried to choose
modules. The menu kept coming back whenever I typed a number,
leading me to believe that nothing was being accomplished. I'd
suggest a line just before the prompt listing Chosen: numbers
as a feedback for the user.
Detect hard drives also gave no feedback as to whether it
was successful or not, but the menu default was changed to
Automatically Partition (unsafe) (default). IMHO this should
not ever become default.
After selecting Partition a hard disk and acknowledging the ide drive
(choice 1 of 1), I got an error from di-utils-partitioner.postinst:
51: /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/disc: Permission denied
postinst exited with status 32256
I suspect this is due to my disk being a mac-format disk,
probably the partitioner for powerpc doesn't exist yet.
Skipping the partition and filesystem steps, the installer
helpfully warns that I haven't done those, yet gives me the
option to say I already did them. This is a nice touch, I think.
di-utils-mount-partitions/which-partition PARTITIOMS also fails with
an incorrect number of arguments, postinst exited with status
5120. Again, this code is probably trying to read my Mac partition
table as if it was an i386 one.
All in all, very impressive so far. It builds and works smoothly
and quickly. We just need some powerpc disk guru to help a little
in order to go any further on powerpc.
--
"The way the Romans made sure their bridges worked is what
we should do with software engineers. They put the designer
under the bridge, and then they marched over it."
-- Lawrence Bernstein, Discover, Feb 2003
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