Thanks a lot!!! That was the missing piece of the puzzle.
I have Debian 6 now running on a Power 740 LPAR, booting correctly with
Software RAID, LVM, the works.
Thank you all for tips, howtos and pdf-guides. This helped me a lot to
better understand the problem, yaboot (knew only Grub before) and the
PPC boot process.
For documentation purposes here the details of what I did:
- created an LPAR with 2 hard disks and compatibility mode "power 6"
- downloaded Debian 6 netinstall cd
(http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/6.0.2.1/powerpc/iso-cd/)
- uploaded it to the IVM and put it into the "optical media library",
assigned it to the LPAR
- activated the LPAR, opend SMS menu, selected cd as boot medium and did
a normal boot
- selected "expert64" in the boot manager and performed a normal
installation till partitioning
- partitioned the first hdd with a prep-boot partition (~7MB), second a
boot partition for the kernels (~100MB), rest as logical partition for
LVM, with logical volumes for swap, root and home and whatever else is
desired.
- continue installation until prompted for the boot loader installation.
Switched with "exit" to main menu and selected "execute a shell".
- chroot to /target.
- downloaded and installed newer yaboot from
http://ftp.debian.org/pool/main/y/yaboot/
- exit chroot and shell back to the installer, install the boot loader
and before exit installation go back to main menu, select to start a
shell again and chroot again.
- edit /etc/yaboot.conf to this:
boot=/dev/sda1
root="/dev/mapper/rootvg-root"
timeout=50
install=/usr/lib/yaboot/yaboot
enablecdboot
image=/vmlinux
label=Linux
read-only
initrd=/initrd.img
image=/vmlinux.old
label=old
read-only
initrd=/initrd.img.old
where "boot" must point to the partition with the kernel images (i.e.
what gets mounted as /boot later), root must point to the logical volume
of the root file system (here it is LV "root" in VG "rootvg"), the
"image" and "initrd" paths must point to the kernel and initial ramdisk
on the disk identified by "boot" (hence the "/vmlinux" and not
"/boot/vmlinux", the later is just the mounted path).
- save yaboot.conf and install yaboot again with new configuration with
"ybin"
- to make sure that yaboot later definitely finds its config, make
an /boot/etc/ and copy /etc/yaboot.conf to /boot/etc/yaboot.conf (yaboot
initially only has the disk under "boot" available and can't access LVs,
hence the copy).
- exit back to the installer and finish installation with subsequent
reboot. Now the LPAR boots to yaboot on the disk (first disk, first prep
partition) and after a small delay it boots the "Linux" entry from
yaboot.conf, doing the normal Linux startup.
If you have created a second hdd and want to use it for redundancy, do
the following:
- install packages "gnu-fdisk" and "mdadm"
- (careful!!! check for correct devices in the next steps!) get the
partition information from the first hdd: "sfdisk -d /dev/sda
/tmp/part.txt" and apply it to the second hdd "sfdisk /dev/sdb
</tmp/part.txt". If sfdisk complains, force the change.
- copy the prep partition from the first hdd to the second: dd
if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/sdb1 bs=1024
- unmount /boot, copy it to the second hdd and remount: dd if=/dev/sda2
of=/dev/sdb2 bs=1024
Now in case of a fatal error with the first hdd you should be able
select the second hdd and its prep partition from the SMS menu, do a
"normal boot". yaboot supposedly looks on the disk for the first primary
partition with the boot flag of which there is also one on sdb, it got
copied there earlier.
- now create a software RAID with one missing device, (RAID1 in this
example): mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md0 --auto=yes --level=1
--raid-devices=2 /dev/sdb5 missing
- make the md0 a physical volume for LVM: pvcreate /dev/md0
- move the rootvg (and any additional VGs) to the RAID:
pvmove /dev/sda5 /dev/md0
- remove sda5 from the VGs as it will become part of the RAID next:
vgreduce rootvg /dev/sda5
- add the now free sda5 to the RAID making it complete: mdadm
--add /dev/md1 /dev/sda5
Thats it! After your RAID has synced everything is good to go. Should
one drive fail the RAID will keep the VGs running and you can still boot
from the copy of the preg and boot partition.
Cheers!
Benedikt
Am Montag, den 12.09.2011, 17:41 +0300 schrieb Gasha:
Make sure, you select Power6 compat mode in Processing TAB for this LPAR.
Otherwise, installer will install 32-bit kernel, which produces errors
like this.
After installation, you can revert back to Power7 mode.
Gasha
On 09/12/2011 04:25 PM, Benedikt Wegmann wrote:
Thanks everybody for you quick replies.
I think I understand the problem better now.
I followed the guids and instructions on how to update yaboot from
within the installation process. It has worked in so far as that yaboot
now gives a version of 1.3.16 when booting the lpar. It now also seems
to find and read the kernel image.
However, as soon as Linux starts booting the console gets filled with
error messages like the ones below (two messages each from different
boots).
I have never seen this kind of error with Linux before can't make heads
or tail whether it is related to yaboot, the kernel the hardware or
whatnot. Any ideas?
As always, booting rescue64 from the Debian install disk and chroot in
the system is all fine, no problems. This is the most confusing aspect.
Thanks for all the advise and help.
It would benefit my project a lot if I could put this Linux server on an
lpar instead a seperate machine.
Best regards,
Benedikt
*****
error messages:
**
Detected bad memory access to address: ffffffffff0f8b98
Package path = /aliases
Return Stack Trace
------------------
@ - c3e530
find-method - c48b9c
(poplocals) - c3c9e8
$call-method - c48c54
(poplocals) - c3c9e8
key-fillq - c491dc
?xoff - c492e8
(poplocals) - c3c9e8
(stdout-write) - c49914
(emit) - c49a14
space - c47970
quit - c4cc98
quit - c4cb40
_syscatch - c50720
_syscatch - c50720
invalid pointer - 388600017d484378
invalid pointer - 5508043eb10316b8
invalid pointer - 7d0c29ae81230008
invalid pointer - a14316b8554ac23e
invalid pointer - 7d4931ae90830014
Detected bad memory access to address: ffffffffff0f8b98
Package path = /packages/boot-mgr
Return Stack Trace
------------------
@ - c3e530
find-method - c48b9c
(poplocals) - c3c9e8
$call-method - c48c54
(poplocals) - c3c9e8
key-fillq - c491dc
?xoff - c492e8
(poplocals) - c3c9e8
(stdout-write) - c49914
(emit) - c49a14
space - c47970
quit - c4cc98
quit - c4cb40
_syscatch - c50720
_syscatch - c50720
invalid pointer - 388600017d484378
invalid pointer - 5508043eb10316b8
invalid pointer - 7d0c29ae81230008
invalid pointer - a14316b8554ac23e
invalid pointer - 7d4931ae90830014
*****
Am Mittwoch, den 07.09.2011, 16:27 +0300 schrieb Gasha:
short:
install yaboot 1.3.16 (from latest/unstable)
long:
see e-mail from 24.08.2011 in list archives
subject:
Debian 6.0.2 on Power7 LPAR - it work - little howto
Gasha
On 09/07/2011 03:56 PM, Benedikt Wegmann wrote:
Hello everybody!
I'm in the process of installing Debian Stable on a Power 740 system.
I'm familiar with the installation on x86 systems and the installation
process of Debian ppc thus looked familiar.
I installed using the "install64" option. Disk partition was "guided -
use whole disk, with separate /home". Installation concluded
successfully but after a reboot yaboot loads and offers the choice of
"Linux" and "old" - as per standard configuration I learned - but
booting "Linux" fails:
Config file read, 4096 bytes
Welcome to yaboot version 1.3.13
Enter "help" to get some basic usage information
boot:
Linux old
boot:
Please wait, loading kernel...
Can't open device</vdevice/v-scsi@30000002/@1:0>
/vdevice/v-scsi@30000002/@1:2,/boot/vmlinux: Unable to open file, Invalid device
boot:
The device however is valid - I can see it in the SMS menu - and I can
successfully boot into the rescue system via the Debian cd ("rescue64")
and subsequently chroot into my installed system, no problem.
However, I can never boot straight into it with yaboot.
Some information about the system:
root@debian:/# cat /proc/partitions
major minor #blocks name
8 0 6291456 sda
8 1 7168 sda1
8 2 1902592 sda2
8 3 1 sda3
8 5 262144 sda5
8 6 4115456 sda6
root@debian:/# cat /etc/yaboot.conf
## yaboot.conf generated by debian-installer
##
## run: "man yaboot.conf" for details. Do not make changes until you have!!
## see also: /usr/share/doc/yaboot/examples for example configurations.
##
## For a dual-boot menu, add one or more of:
## bsd=/dev/hdaX, macos=/dev/hdaY, macosx=/dev/hdaZ
boot="/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SAIX_VDASD_00f6c18700004c0000000130f6e6a926.4-part1"
device=/vdevice/v-scsi@30000002/@1
partition=2
root="UUID=1017dfc6-257e-433f-9247-6676b732630a"
timeout=50
install=/usr/lib/yaboot/yaboot
enablecdboot
image=/boot/vmlinux
label=Linux
read-only
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
image=/boot/vmlinux.old
label=old
read-only
initrd=/boot/initrd.img.old
root@debian:/#
root@debian:/# mount
/dev/sda2 on / type ext3 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro,data=ordered)
/dev/sda6 on /home type ext3 (rw,relatime,errors=continue,data=ordered)
tmpfs on /dev type tmpfs (rw,relatime,mode=755)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,relatime)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,relatime)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000)
root@debian:/# ls -lR /boot/
/boot/:
total 18364
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1214811 Jun 14 14:44 System.map-2.6.32-5-powerpc-smp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 93218 Jun 14 14:44 config-2.6.32-5-powerpc-smp
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 31 Sep 7 09:44 initrd.img -> initrd.img-2.6.32-5-powerpc-smp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 10216212 Sep 7 09:44 initrd.img-2.6.32-5-powerpc-smp
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 28 Sep 7 09:44 vmlinux -> vmlinux-2.6.32-5-powerpc-smp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 7233739 Jun 14 14:44 vmlinux-2.6.32-5-powerpc-smp
root@debian:/# uname -a
Linux debian 2.6.32-5-powerpc64 #1 SMP Tue Jun 14 11:04:52 UTC 2011 ppc64 GNU/Linux
I'm at a loss as to what the problem might be. The installation looks
fine within the chroot environment, I just can't get it to boot.
I also tried an install as per the wiki site
(https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/wikis/home?lang=en#/wiki/Debian%206%20on%20Power7%20LPAR/page/Start%20installation) with updating yaboot during the install as described but without lick. The only aspect where my install differs is with regard to the use of multipath. I use a plain old scsi disk and only have one VIOS in the machine.
Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
Thanks!