Re: Sparc d-i terminal weirdness?
On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 9:27 PM, Frans Pop <elendil@planet.nl> wrote:
> On Monday 03 November 2008, Mike Grice wrote:
>> > Does the Etch version of the installer work?
>>
>> No. I'm actually doing a netboot into a SUN LDOM. This shouldn't be
>> any different from a normal SPARC install, except that the disk and
>> net are accessed through new modules. The reason I was rolling my own
>> d-i is because the base lenny installer (the rc) does not have these
>> two modules, sunvnet and sunvdc, installed. The rc netboot image does
>> work as expected, up until the point it (correctly) can't find the
>> network card.
>
> I've checked and AFAICT these modules are currently not enabled in the
> kernel-image packages for Lenny. This means that, to get this supported
> in the installer, you'll have to do two things:
> - file a wishlist bug report against linux-2.6 requesting those modules
> to be activated for sparc
> - wait until you get an acknowledgement for that report with the bug
> number
> - file a second wishlist BR against linux-kernel-di-sparc-2.6 requesting
> to include the modules in the installer with a reference to the first
> bug report
Ok, thanks for that! I've added more text to the original bug I filed
against the kernel (being new to the debian BR system, I filed it at a
higher importance... it was reassigned to wishlist. The bug report is
501651.
I then filed a new bug as you said against the installer referencing
501651. This new bug is 504742.
>> This is weird. I have booted with BOOT_DEBUG before, but I didn't
>> think to run the scripts manually. Strangely, if I run them manually,
>> it works (although the display looks a bit corrupted (like its not
>> redrawn properly, but fine enough to use by hand)).
>
> Are you sure you ran the scripts the same way as during init? Some scripts
> need to be sourced instead of called normally. As you can get further by
> doing things manually, I'd expect it to be possible to trace the problem
> spot.
Ok, I got a little further. I started running the wrapper scripts the
same way init calls them (via reopen-console). The first part of the
installer, /sbin/debian-installer-startup, works fine. When I run the
second part, /sbin/debian-installer itself, things break.
I'm not sure where, but its hard to recreate the exact environment (as
its called via reopen-console). I'll have to do some digging, maybe I
can write a bunch of similar scripts just using the contents of
reopen-console with the sourcing part included.
> I have absolutely no ideas about this. In cases like this it's basically
> up to the person who sees the problem to try to trace its origin. You
> could try asking on the debian-sparc mailing list or even the sparc list
> where kernel developers hang out (sparclinux AT vger.kernel.org).
I might try the debian-sparc list if this doesn't pan out... thanks!
> I don't have access to a Sparc LDOM, but even if I did I would not look
> into this myself beyond my general suggestions up to this point as I
> don't consider myself a sparc porter.
> If you do find out what the cause of the problem is, please let us know.
> If there is something we can change in the installer to fix it or work
> around it, we will be most happy to do so.
Will do, and thanks for all your help.
Mike
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