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Bug#985956: #985956 - missing kernel module in installer



Pete Batard <pete@akeo.ie> wrote:

> Thus, I'm going to leave people who are more familiar with Debian linux 
> configuration with the action of ensuring that mdio-bcm-unimac.ko does 
> get included in the install image.

OK. So I took a look at this, and it is indeed somewhat involved getting the module in the right place.

It turns out that the kernel build is already building it, and it's
inthe main kernel image, it's just not in the installer nic-modules package.

So the patch to fix this is:
diff -Nru linux-5.10.28/debian/installer/modules/arm64/nic-modules linux-5.10.28/debian/installer/modules/arm64/nic-modules
--- linux-5.10.28/debian/installer/modules/arm64/nic-modules    2021-04-07 08:28:57.000000000 +0100
+++ linux-5.10.28/debian/installer/modules/arm64/nic-modules    2021-04-26 19:20:12.000000000 +0100
@@ -1 +1,3 @@
 #include <nic-modules>
+
+mdio-bcm-unimac

Then (to get a test installer image) build the linux package
Then install the resulting linux-support-5.10.0-6, linux-image-5.10.0-6-arm64-unsigned, linux-image-5.10.0-6-cloud-arm64-unsigned, linux-image-5.10.0-6-rt-arm64-unsigned packages, and build linux-signed-arm64 to get a set of udebs
Then copy those into build/localudebs and build debian-installer

I've done this, and if you want to test the mini.iso image at: http://wookware.org/software/rpi4-test.iso
That would be good. (I don't have an rpi4 to test on)
sha256: 595e57c2bcf153d05986261cf82fbfd0593787fb755139b8ceb726be2b471e3e

The one thing I'm not clear about is whether making the
mdio-bcm-unimac module available in the nic-modules-5.10.0-6-arm64-di
package on the installer image is sufficient, or if something needs to
be done about the initramfs too? I think this should be enough for the
installer to boot and install stuff from its own iso image and thus
get the networking working. Note that the image above will install the
standard linux-image-5.10.0-6-arm64 (v5.10.28-1 from the debian repo)
in /boot, but that has mdio-bcm-unimac available so should work fine.

So I _think_ that means we don't need to change the initrd because
both the installer and normal boot have the ethernet mdio driver
available on localmedia, but I may be misunderstanding things.

Right at the start of this bug you said:
> Note that this is a rather critical regression (since it used to work 
> fine with previous bullseye ISOs)

I don't understand this. This module has presumably been missing from
the installer packages all along, so I don't see how it could have
worked before? 

If it really is a regression then this could be deemed an RC bug and
it is possible that it will get fixed for stable, but if it isn't then
I think we've missed the boat on kernel changes for the next stable.
However this is the sort of important platform-support bug that should
go into the -r1 point release soon after the stable release.

First we have to prove that this fix does actually work and is
correct. Then we can ask the kernel people what the situation is. I
agree that broken rPi4 ethernet on the installer is quite bad. 

Wookey
-- 
Principal hats:  Linaro, Debian, Wookware, ARM
http://wookware.org/

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