clone 664128 -1
retitle -1 Allow grub installation on IBM Power machines
thanks
On 10/23/2012 11:36 AM, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 10:18:00AM -0400, Milan Kupcevic wrote:
>> On 10/23/2012 09:52 AM, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
>>> On 10/22/2012 05:55 PM, Milan Kupcevic wrote:
>>>> We can allow d-i grub installation on powerpc machines for wheezy, but
>>>> not make it default.
>>>
>>> [...]
>>>
>>>> Manual creation of the appropriate partition in d-i (/boot/grub) will
>>>> enable grub installation in wheezy d-i. Thus, we will be able to
>>>> experiment with d-i grub installation on powerpc machines.
>>>
>>> ok, this sounds like a good step to me. Are you saying this is present
>>> in the current wheezy beta3 ?
>>>
>>
>>
>> No. It will eventually hit the daily builds soon. See attachment.
>>
>>
>> Milan
>>
>>
>>
>
>> commit cf2fc86abf0fd34963afb49047c21e94a2cde40e
>> Author: Milan Kupcevic <milan@physics.harvard.edu>
>> Date: Mon Oct 22 17:46:06 2012 -0400
>>
>> Allow grub installation on PowerPC machines
>>
>> * Allow grub installation on PowerPC machines if /boot/grub partition
>> is present. Closes: #664128
>>
>> diff --git a/debian/changelog b/debian/changelog
>> index 9105cdb..204cc11 100644
>> --- a/debian/changelog
>> +++ b/debian/changelog
>> @@ -1,3 +1,10 @@
>> +grub-installer (1.83) UNRELEASED; urgency=low
>> +
>> + * Allow grub installation on PowerPC machines if /boot/grub partition
>> + is present. Closes: #664128
>> +
>> + -- Milan Kupcevic <milan@physics.harvard.edu> Mon, 22 Oct 2012 17:39:07 -0400
>> +
>> grub-installer (1.82) unstable; urgency=low
>>
>> [ Updated translations ]
>> diff --git a/debian/isinstallable b/debian/isinstallable
>> index e66bac1..89fadb7 100755
>> --- a/debian/isinstallable
>> +++ b/debian/isinstallable
>> @@ -15,11 +15,11 @@ case $ARCH in
>> exit 1
>> fi
>> ;;
>> - powerpc/chrp_pegasos)
>> - ;;
>> powerpc/*)
>> - log "GRUB not yet usable on PowerPC systems other than Pegasos/Efika"
>> - exit 1
>> + mount | grep "on /target/boot/grub" 1>&2 || {
>> + log "GRUB requires OF bootable partition mounted at /boot/grub on PowerPC systems"
>> + exit 1
>> + }
>> ;;
>> mipsel/loongson-2f)
>> ;;
>
> And that would be wrong. That is NOT how grub works on IBM powerpc
> machines. That is true of powermac and possible a few other types.
>
> The IBM OF does NOT support filesystems. It executes the ELF binary in
> the PReP partition, which can not be mounted.
IBM Firmware does support filesystems, just not the same filesystems as
Macs and Pegasos. IBM Firmware likes FAT and iso9660, Mac wants HFS,
while Pegasos works with ext2, AFFS, and iso9660.
If you put a bootloader on FAT filesystem you could put other meta
information in /ppc/bootinfo.txt file so that IBM Firmware and other IBM
boot management tools can get full textual description and optionally an
icon of the bootable OS. It would make it possible to dual boot Linux
(GRUB) and AIX while choosing which one you want to boot using standard
IBM tools (ie Multiboot menu). We will see if we want to go this way or
we want to keep resetting firmware variables using '/sbin/nvsetenv' on
Linux and 'bootlist' on AIX when we want to reboot into the other OS.
> grub-install simply dd's
> the grub core image into that partition and that's it. When creating the
> image it passes and argument to the grub-mkimage to set which partition
> to look at to get the grub modules and config files since in the IBM
> case it won't be the boot partition (since it has no filesystem).
>
Yaboot installer installs yaboot on IBM Power machines exactly the same way.
> So please don't make such a wrong change. You will just make life harder
> for IBM users.
This will not make life harder nor easier for IBM users. Grub
installation was not offered on IBM Power machines by d-i until now, and
will not be offered after this particular change.
>
> The correct thing to check for on an IBM is that a PReP boot type
> partition exists. That is all. It can not be mounted.
>
> For example:
>
> root@rceng03:~# parted
> GNU Parted 2.3
> Using /dev/sda
> Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
> (parted) print
> Model: IBM MBE2147RC (scsi)
> Disk /dev/sda: 147GB
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
> Partition Table: msdos
>
> Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
> 1 1049kB 8389kB 7340kB primary boot, prep
> 2 8389kB 10.0GB 10.0GB primary raid
> 3 10.0GB 147GB 137GB primary raid
>
> In this case the setup is RAID1 across sd[abc]2 for / and RAID5 across
> sd[abc]3 for LVM.
>
> grub is happily installed to /dev/sda1 (and sdb1 and sdc1 as well for
> redundancy) using grub-install. This works.
>
Thank you for providing information about your experience with grub on
IBM Power machines. After wheezy release we will go forward with
transition from yaboot to grub. Your experience will be valuable for
further discussion about d-i issues on IBM Power machines.
Milan
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