Bug#773229: partman-base: partitioning should not offer emmc boot0, boot1 or rpmb partitions as possible installation targets
Source: partman-base
Version: 180
Severity: normal
I have an ARM board (Nvidia Jetson TK-1) which includes an on board eMMC. When
installing the list of devices to select for installation partitioning included
mmcblk1{boot0,boot1,rpmb}. (RPMB == Replay Protected Memory Block).
These are not normal partitions and should not be included. They are small (4M)
and have special hardware properties which makes them unsuitable for use. [0]
has a reasonable description of what they are, suffice it to say that they are
magic and shouldn't be messed with without care. They may not even be writable
via normal means. [1] has some more background.
lsblk says the following. sda is a SATA drive, mmcblk0 is a normal removable SD
card (where my install actually lives) and mmcblk1 is the one with the magic
partitions, which is soldered onto the board.
# lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 465.8G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 243M 0 part
├─sda2 8:2 0 462.7G 0 part
├─sda3 8:3 0 1K 0 part
└─sda5 8:5 0 2.9G 0 part
mmcblk1rpmb 179:1024 0 4M 0 disk
mmcblk1boot0 179:512 0 4M 1 disk
mmcblk1boot1 179:768 0 4M 1 disk
mmcblk0 179:0 0 14.5G 0 disk
├─mmcblk0p1 179:1 0 243M 0 part /boot
├─mmcblk0p2 179:2 0 13.6G 0 part /
├─mmcblk0p3 179:3 0 1K 0 part
└─mmcblk0p5 179:5 0 674M 0 part [SWAP]
mmcblk1 179:256 0 14.7G 0 disk
├─mmcblk1p1 179:257 0 4G 0 part
├─mmcblk1p2 179:258 0 4M 0 part
├─mmcblk1p3 179:259 0 64M 0 part
├─mmcblk1p4 179:260 0 4M 0 part
├─mmcblk1p5 179:261 0 4M 0 part
├─mmcblk1p6 179:262 0 4M 0 part
├─mmcblk1p7 179:263 0 4M 0 part
└─mmcblk1p8 179:264 0 10.6G 0 part
I'm a bit confused why boot0/1 show up since parted already filters read only
devices (in parted_devices.c:process_device).
I'm not sure how to identify these magic devices other than by name.
Ian.
[0] http://www.ebv.com/fileadmin/design_solutions/php/download.php?path=fileadmin%2Fproducts%2FEBVuniversity%2F120912_Micron_e.MMC%2F120912_mic_emmc_Partitioning.pdf
[1] https://dev-nell.com/rpmb-emmc-errors-under-linux.html
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.0
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386, armhf, armel
Kernel: Linux 3.16.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)
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