Re: Updated installer images
On 09/08/2017 11:32 AM, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
Hi!
I have generated an updated set of debian-installer images for
Debian Ports which also now includes alpha [1].
[...]
ppc64 has still some issues with the partition manager, but I'm
working on fixing that.
[...]
[1] https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/
I have now tried the latest installer image for ppc64 (SHA256:
46844b4c8da76c3fb18d3d350b1262b9938c8b8ff8a85bd193d76ac7e33b5dc9) on my
recently purchased Power Macintosh G5 (11,2):
Looks good so far, although I needed three tries in the end :-). Thanks
again for creating these installer images.
Below are my notes:
# Debian Sid for ppc64 installation #
## Machine used ##
Apple Power Macintosh G5 (11,2) w/1 Dual-Core PPC970MP @ 2 GHz
## Notes ##
### 2017-09-19 ###
* Needed to boot the installation disk via the option (Alt) key, the C
key didn't work for me, but this could be an issue of my specific
machine or my non-Apple keyboard
* The yaboot menu offers both `install` and `install32`, are 32 bit
Power Macs then still supported by the installation?
* The installer starts up with the "Select a language" screen, the
background is red though (also mentioned by Christoph Biedl).
* The background stays red throughout the installation
* The "Partition disks" screen starts with saying:
```
This partitioner doesn't have information about the default type of the
partition tables on your architecture. Please send an e-mail message to
debian-boot@lists.debian.org with information. Please note that if the
type of the partition table is unsupported by libparted, then this
partitioner will not work properly.
Continue with partitioning?
```
I assume this is the problem you refer to.
* I manually chose the mac partition table setting.
* The background switched to blue sometime before the next step
* The "Install yaboot on a hard disk" screen starts with saying:
```
No hard disks were found which have an "Apple_Bootstrap" partition. You
must create an 819200-byte partition with type "Apple_Bootstrap".
```
Continuing makes the step failing, the background goes red again.
I couldn't fix that by restarting the partitioner and hence restarted
the installation today
### 2017-09-20 #1 ###
Same as above, except this time I created an empty 1 MiB partition
before the partition for `/` and activated the boot flag for it. The
"Install yaboot on a hard disk" screen now correctly proposes this
partition for boot loader installation. Installation continued without
further issues. Rebooting the machine and explicitly running `mac-boot`
from OpenFirmware - as the machine is configured for network booting
there - I end up in the first stage Debian GNU/Linux bootstrap, after a
short timeout it continues to the yaboot prompt. Trying to load the
configured Linux kernel, I get "unknown or corrupt file system" for the
OF path of the root partition. I assumed yaboot can load kernels from
EXT4 file systems - I have an Xserve G4 with Debian Wheezy on disk and
yaboot 1.3.16, where it works fine with EXT4 - but it looks like this
ability does no longer work for EXT4 file systems created with the
current default settings, see [1], [2] an [3]. The solution seems to be
to create a separate partition for `/boot` formatted as EXT2. To steer
clear I restarted the installation.
[1]:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/yaboot/+bug/1606089/comments/10
[2]: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=825110#67
[3]: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=834473
### 2017-09-20 #2 ###
Same as for try #1 today, but this time I created an additional
partition for `/boot` - as EXT2 is considered working, I tried with EXT3
to see if this will also work with yaboot 1.3.17. The installation
finished as before but after rebooting, yaboot was now able to load the
kernel and initrd and the machine could boot through to the login prompt.
The whole installation took 20 minutes.
### Conclusion ###
So installations on Power Macintosh G5 (11,2) machines with the current
image should work correctly as long as:
* the mac partition table setting is used during partitioning
* a separate unused partition with boot flag enabled for the boot loader
is created (1 MiB or maybe also 819200 Byte is enough)
* a separate partition for `/boot` with EXT2 (untested by me, but seems
to work for others, see links above) or EXT3 (tested by me) is created
Cheers,
Frank
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