Re: Updated Debian Ports installation images 2025-03-31 / loongarch test report
Hello Yifei,
thanks a lot for the detailed feedback! This is very useful.
On Tue, 2025-04-22 at 23:05 +0000, Yifei Zhan wrote:
> Yes, I'm aware of that UEFI issue and my firmware is updated to beta10 which is
> the latest one listed on [1]
>
> It eventually got it working by manually running the EFI file from the UEFI
> Shell, the process is roughly:
>
> - boot into firmware, select Boot Manager -> UEFI Shell -> spam ESC to skip
> startup.nsh
>
> - find the FS entry ending with USB(XXX)/CDROM(XXX), for me that's fs2, then
> manually load grub:
>
> shell> fs2:
> shell> cd efi
> shell> cd boot
> shell> bootloongarch64.efi
I hope that Loongson fixes this issue in the near future. Using these filenames
works on all other UEFI targets we have, including the emulated LoongArch machine
in QEMU.
> - select 'install', 'graphical install' won't work due to the missing
> /install/gtk/initrd.gz
Since loong64 is still part of Debian Ports, there are limitations with regards
what's available in debian-installer. I have never tried building an installer
image with the graphical installer, I would have to try that first.
> At one stage of the installation I was prompted about missing firmware for USB
> controller, then the USB drive is disconnected, I have to unplug and replug it
> then manually remount it as /cdrom. But other than that, the whole process is
> smoother than anticipated!
Firmware is also only available for Debian release architectures which means that
this issue will be resolved when loong64 becomes an official architecture.
> I installed KDE Plasma and although sddm/lightdm won't work (due to missing
> graphic card?), running startx from the console does the trick. I also have to
> disable acceleration in about:config for firefox to display any webpage, but
> other than that the system is usable as a desktop.
Both sddm and lightdm should work just fine. Did you install any desktop using
the tasksel command? This should install all the necessary packages.
Adrian
--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer
`. `' Physicist
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
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