Hi Cyril,
Thanks for willing to investigate !
LPAR setup in PowerVM can not be reproduced to my knowledge with qemu ; this a
partitioning configuration with PHYP proprietary firmware by IBM.
Using a ppc64el vm, I never had the issue, since I think, hvc0 does not
exist and thus does not create race condition with tty0.
The last possible configuration providing hvc0 is the baremetal mode
(PowerNV), installating a physical Power machine with linux on top of
it.
Hopefully, qemu is able to emulate a baremetal machine (PowerNV) as skiboot
firmware is opensource (compared to PHYP).
I tried and could reproduce the bug after 3 tries.
For this, on your amd64 machine :
- install qemu-system-ppc 5.2 (in my case, using stable, I used 1:5.2+dfsg-9~bpo10+1 )
- get those :
* https://openpower.xyz/job/openpower/job/openpower-op-build/label=slave,target=witherspoon/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/images/rootfs.cpio.xz
* https://openpower.xyz/job/openpower/job/openpower-op-build/label=slave,target=witherspoon/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/images/zImage.epapr
- use the following to emulate the P9 PowerNV Witherspoon machine :
qemu-system-ppc64 -m 2G -machine powernv9 -smp 8,cores=8,threads=1 \
-accel tcg,thread=single \
-device e1000e,netdev=net0,mac=C0:FF:EE:00:00:02,bus=pcie.0,addr=0x0 \
-netdev user,id=net0,hostfwd=::20022-:22,hostname=pnv \
-kernel ./zImage.epapr \
-initrd ./rootfs.cpio.xz \
-nographic
- Once you get into the petitboot menu, "Exit to shell"
- wget : (I couldn't boot the mini.iso)
* https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/ppc64el/daily/netboot/debian-installer/ppc64el/vmlinux
* https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/ppc64el/daily/netboot/debian-installer/ppc64el/initrd.gz
- kexec those :
1. kexec -l vmlinux -i initrd.gz -e (you'll get an error.. but this
steps seems necessary)
2. kexec -s vmlinux -i initrd.gz -e
- cross fingers ; if it doesn't fail, halt and rerun qemu...
I hope you get it as well!
F.
On Fri, 23 Apr 2021 22:48:33 +0200, Cyril Brulebois <kibi@debian.org> wrote:
> Hello Frédéric,
>
> Frédéric Bonnard <frediz@debian.org> (2021-04-22):
> > Boot method: CD
> > Image version: http://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/ppc64el/daily/netboot/mini.iso
> > Date: April 21st 2021
> >
> > Machine: Power10 machine but got it on Power8 as well
> >
> > This happens randomly when the installer menu starts, I get to the first
> > menu "Choose language", but it is red saying "An installation failed...
> > The failing step is: Choose language".
> >
> > It seems the missing file /var/lib/dpkg/status is causing this.
> > Instead I have /var/lib/dpkg/status.bak
>
> I don't know much about ppc (I don't think iBook G4 experience counts
> much at this stage), but I see that qemu-system-ppc exists, and that it
> provides qemu-system-ppc64. Would you have some guide that could help us
> reproduce the issue from say an amd64 host?
>
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Cyril Brulebois (kibi@debian.org) <https://debamax.com/>
> D-I release manager -- Release team member -- Freelance Consultant
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