Re: Updated installer images
Hi Frank!
On 09/20/2017 04:03 PM, Frank Scheiner wrote:
> 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.
Great. They are still very much work in progress though.
> Below are my notes:
>
> # Debian Sid for ppc64 installation #
>
> ## Machine used ##
>
> Apple Power Macintosh G5 (11,2) w/1 Dual-Core PPC970MP @ 2 GHz
I actually have a very similar machine sitting in the basement.
> ## 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
Yes, this is nothing we can influence. This is purely related to the firmware.
> * The yaboot menu offers both `install` and `install32`, are 32 bit Power Macs then still supported by the installation?
No, not at all. If you want to install on 32-bit hardware, you still need to
use the powerpc NETINST image which can be found here:
> http://jenkins.kfreebsd.eu/jenkins/view/cd/job/debian-cd_sid_powerpc/ws/
The reason why it says "install32" there is because I copied the boot
configuration in debian-cd from powerpc to ppc64. Again, this is still
work in progress.
> * 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
This must a bug specific to Apple (New World?) machines. I don't see this
problem when installing on my POWER7 machine.
> * 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.
Yes, this is because partman-partitioning hasn't support for ppc64 yet which
I just found out today.
It needs to be added here:
> https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/d-i/partman-partitioning.git/tree/lib/disk-label.sh
I will do that tomorrow.
> * I manually chose the mac partition table setting.
Ok.
> * 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
Yes. I am aware of this issue.
> ### 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.
This could be fixed by adding partitioning recipes for ppc64 in partman-auto:
> https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/d-i/partman-auto.git/tree/
However, I'm still not sure whether we should actually use GRUB on ppc64 by default.
> ### 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
Can you try to set up GRUB on your machine? It would be interesting whether GRUB
works on all ppc64 machines, including Mac NewWorld hardware.
Thanks in any case for the detailed testing and documentation. This saves me the
time to perform all these tests myself on my own Apple PowerMac G5.
Thanks,
Adrian
--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org
`. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
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