Re: New ppc64 installer image available -- installation test report
On 09/26/2017 11:10 AM, Rick Thomas wrote:
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.
Yes, can you please test this? Apparently, the /boot partition is not always required,
see the reference to [2] below.
I tried it. I got the same “Unknown or corrupt filesystem” error message from yaboot as Frank did.
Ah. I just re-read what you originally wrote and I realized the issue is not the partition
size (as it is often with bootloaders) but the filesystem used. And your explanation
below seems to be correct.
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.
When was that machine installed?
February 5, 2017, using the Jessie installer available at the time. It’s running more or less stock Jessie powerpc.
Ok. Please always mention that when referencing other images for comparison.
One of the links [1] Frank gave for the ext4 problem indicated that it was a 64-bit
feature in ext4 that yaboot couldn’t cope with. It also talked about disabling that
feature for 64-bit powerpc until it could be fixed. Could be relevant?
[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=825110#67
Yes, this is very much relevant. And the workaround used is to disable
64-bit features in ext4 [1]. I don't think this is a path we should
be taking. Instead, we should just check what is needed to get GRUB
support working.
In this context, I just found this commit [2] which added the /boot partition. Note the
additional "$defaultignore{}" designation which apparently means the partition is not
created in all cases.
In light of the above, it seems that it should not be ignored by default.
Well, this is something that we should discuss and we should probably
open a new discussion for that. We are now facing the situation that
Yaboot is not able to work with modern filesystems and we have multiple
possible ways to address this issue.
For now, I have committed the changes to partman-auto to use the powerpc
recipes on ppc64.
Adrian
[1] https://anonscm.debian.org/git/d-i/partman-ext3.git/commit/?id=f87dc92157262de1ad8dd3f2343436f08271b4dc
--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org
`. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de
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