Re: New ppc64 installer image available -- installation test report
On Sep 25, 2017, at 1:02 PM, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de> wrote:
> On 09/25/2017 10:26 AM, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
>>> However the partitioning scheme used by “guided — use whole disk" doesn't produce an HFS+ "bootstrap" partition or an ext2 "/boot" partition.
>>> I created the two missing partitions manually, and let it proceed to the “pick a repo mirror” stage.
>>
>> Ok, this confirms that we need to use the partition recipes for powerpc
>> on ppc64 in partman-auto. I will work on this.
>
> Can you try the updated image [1]?
>
> I have tested it on my POWER7 server but yaboot still refuses to install
> there because it insists on an Apple Boot signature. GRUB will be a better
> choice in any case.
>
> Adrian
>
>> [1] https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/debian-9.0-ppc64-NETINST-1.iso
I gave it a whirl. I used the same procedure as described in my previous report.
The differences I noticed were:
When it got to partitioning I chose (as last time) “guided — use whole disk”.
It produced a partitioning that had a 1MB HFS partition marked as bootable, but no ext2 partition for /boot.
Based on Frank’s experience that yaboot couldn’t handle ext4, I believe the ext2 /boot is necessary.
In any case, I manually created one.
One other oddity I noticed was that the HFS partition was not labeled “bootstrap” as it has always been in the past.
The name does not appear to be necessary, but loosing it would be a break from tradition.
It wrote yaboot to the HFS partition OK and rebooted.
This time it did *not* have any problem finding the root partition, so the boot went without mishap.
I did not need to use “rescue” to patch yaboot.conf and run ybin.
As an experiment, I did try booting from the CD and entering “rescue” at the boot prompt. It booted fine, but (as before) it came up in “install” mode, not “rescue”.
If you think it would be helpful, I can do it again but leave the partitioning alone — not create an ext2 /boot partition. This would verify (or falsify) Frank’s observation that yaboot requires ext2.
Interestingly, I have a G4 (32-bit) Mac that lacks a separate /boot partition and uses ext4 for its root partition. It boots fine using yaboot version 1.3.16-4. The G5 I’m doing tests on is using yaboot version 1.3.17-4.
One other thought: A single MB for the HFS partition may be too small if we want to support both grub and yaboot at the same time. How about 2MB (or even 10? — disk space is cheap).
That’s what I know.
Rick
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