Bug#404950: Installation Report [mips] [rc1] [Failure] SWARM (Broadcom BCM91250a)

[Karsten Merker <merker@debian.org>]

On Thu, Jan 04, 2007 at 08:30:32PM +0100, Karsten Merker wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 04, 2007 at 04:48:09PM +0100, Frans Pop wrote:

> > The device that is passed to partman is:
> > /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part
> > 
> > The code in partman that interprets this expects either:
> > /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/disc
> > /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1
> > 
> > But in this case, "part" without a partition number seems to be used for 
> > the whole disk, which perfectly explains the display as a partition 
> > without partition number.
> > We could support this in the relevant partman function, but I'd like to 
> > know if this use of "part" to indicate the whole disk is valid first. It 
> > could also be a bug, either in the kernel or in udev's devfs 
> > compatibility code.
> > 
> > So, my follow-up questions:
> > - what is the output of 'cd /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/; ls -l'?
> 
> ~ # cd /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/; ls -l
> brw-rw----    1 root     root       3,   0 Jan  4 19:07 part
> brw-rw----    1 root     root       3,   1 Jan  4 19:07 part1

> > - what is the non-devfs representation of this disk (e.g. /dev/hda*) and
> >   what devices are present for that?
> 
> ~ # ls -l /dev/hda*
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           32 Jan  4 19:07 /dev/hda ->
> ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           33 Jan  4 19:07 /dev/hda1 ->
> ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1

To narrow down the possible reasons for this behaviour I have done some
further tests:

- Configuring the machine to little endian mode (mipsel)
  does not change anything, so it is not endianess-related.

- On another mipsel machine (Cobalt NASRaQ) which uses the
  integrated PCI IDE controller of its VIA vt82c586a southbridge,
  everything looks normal:

  ~ # cd /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/; ls -l
  brw-rw----    1 root     root       3,   0 Jan  1 00:00 disc
  brw-rw----    1 root     root       3,   1 Jan  1 00:00 part1

Besides the different IDE controllers and their drivers there is
one other difference between the two: the SWARM uses a 64bit
kernel while the Cobalt uses a 32bit kernel. Userland is 32bit in
both cases.

Regards,
Karsten
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