Re: New discussion: ppc64 installer -- ext2 /boot partition to keep yaboot happy.
Hi Adrian, Rick,
On 10/06/2017 12:08 PM, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
As you hinted, it can’t mount /boot/grub until after it has been
formatted as
HFS (currently by yaboot install) Is there a chicken/egg problem
here? You
can’t install grub without installing yaboot first, so it’s not
possible to
install without yaboot… So we can’t actually get rid of yaboot at all?
I'm not sure what makes you think that the mechanism to format HFS
filesystems
is inherently part of Yaboot but that's definitely not the case.
Yaboot's installer
script itself doesn't create the HFS filesystem, it relies on hfsutils
for that
which can be used independently of Yaboot, of course.
I today tried the installation of Debian Sid on my Power Mac G5 (11,2)
with the latest installer image ([1] from today 12:56h) and I saw that
the HFS partition is not formatted when using GRUB as boot loader.
[1]: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/debian-9.0-ppc64-NETINST-1.iso
I think this is because only when yaboot is chosen as boot loader, the
`hfsutils` package is actually installed:
```
[...]
Oct 8 14:27:35 in-target: yaboot is already the newest version (1.3.17-4).
Oct 8 14:27:35 in-target: Suggested packages:
Oct 8 14:27:35 in-target: hfsutils-tcltk
Oct 8 14:27:35 in-target: The following NEW packages will be installed:
Oct 8 14:27:35 in-target: hfsutils
Oct 8 14:27:35 in-target: 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove
and 0 not upgraded.
Oct 8 14:27:35 in-target: Need to get 71.2 kB of archives.
Oct 8 14:27:35 in-target: After this operation, 2,875 kB of additional
disk space will be used.
Oct 8 14:27:35 in-target: Get:1
http://ftp.ports.debian.org/debian-ports sid/main ppc64 hfsutils ppc64
3.2.6-13+b1 [71.2 kB]
Oct 8 14:27:36 in-target: Fetched 71.2 kB in 0s (260 kB/s)
Oct 8 14:27:37 in-target: Selecting previously unselected package hfsutils.
[...]
Oct 8 14:38:06 yaboot-installer: mkofboot: Finding OpenFirmware device
path to `/dev/sda2'...
Oct 8 14:38:06 yaboot-installer: mkofboot: Creating HFS filesystem on
/dev/sda2...
[...]
```
With GRUB selected (note the time stamps, this actually happened earlier
than the yaboot installation, so the `hfsutils` package wasn't already
installed at this time but is really no dependency of Grub!):
```
Oct 8 13:28:18 main-menu[4594]: INFO: Menu item 'grub-installer' selected
Oct 8 13:28:18 grub-installer: info: architecture: ppc64/powermac_newworld
Oct 8 13:28:19 in-target: Reading package lists...
Oct 8 13:28:19 in-target:
Oct 8 13:28:19 in-target: Building dependency tree...
Oct 8 13:28:20 in-target:
Oct 8 13:28:20 in-target: Reading state information...
Oct 8 13:28:20 in-target:
Oct 8 13:28:21 in-target: The following additional packages will be
installed:
Oct 8 13:28:21 in-target: libfreetype6 libfuse2 libpng16-16 os-prober
Oct 8 13:28:21 in-target: Suggested packages:
Oct 8 13:28:21 in-target: multiboot-doc xorriso desktop-base fuse
Oct 8 13:28:21 in-target: The following NEW packages will be installed:
Oct 8 13:28:21 in-target: grub-common libfreetype6 libfuse2
libpng16-16 os-prober
Oct 8 13:28:25 in-target: 0 upgraded, 5 newly installed, 0 to remove
and 0 not upgraded.
Oct 8 13:28:25 in-target: Need to get 0 B/3,287 kB of archives.
Oct 8 13:28:25 in-target: After this operation, 21.6 MB of additional
disk space will be used.
Oct 8 13:28:25 in-target: Get:1 cdrom://[Debian GNU/Linux 9.0 _Sid_ -
Unofficial ppc64 NETINST 20171008-10:46] sid/main ppc64 libpng16-16
ppc64 1.6.34-1 [285 kB]
Oct 8 13:28:26 in-target: Get:2 cdrom://[Debian GNU/Linux 9.0 _Sid_ -
Unofficial ppc64 NETINST 20171008-10:46] sid/main ppc64 libfreetype6
ppc64 2.8-0.2 [421 kB]
Oct 8 13:28:26 in-target: Get:3 cdrom://[Debian GNU/Linux 9.0 _Sid_ -
Unofficial ppc64 NETINST 20171008-10:46] sid/main ppc64 libfuse2 ppc64
2.9.7-1 [120 kB]
Oct 8 13:28:27 in-target: Get:4 cdrom://[Debian GNU/Linux 9.0 _Sid_ -
Unofficial ppc64 NETINST 20171008-10:46] sid/main ppc64 grub-common
ppc64 2.02-2 [2,434 kB]
Oct 8 13:28:29 in-target: Get:5 cdrom://[Debian GNU/Linux 9.0 _Sid_ -
Unofficial ppc64 NETINST 20171008-10:46] sid/main ppc64 os-prober ppc64
1.76 [26.2 kB]
Oct 8 13:28:30 in-target: Selecting previously unselected package
libpng16-16:ppc64.
```
I don't know, why the HFS partition is not formatted at the end of the
partitioning step, which would IMHO make more sense.
I also saw the following message during GRUB installation:
```
It seems that this computer is configured to boot via EFI, but maybe
that configuration will not work for booting from the hard drive. Some
EFI firmware implementations do not meet the EFI specification (i.e.
they are buggy!) and do not support proper configuration of boot options
from system hard drives.
A workaround for this problem is to install an extra copy of the EFI
version of the GRUB boot loader to a fallback location, the "removable
media path". Almost all EFI systems, no matter how buggy, will boot GRUB
that way.
Warning: If the installer failed to detect another operating system that
is present on your computer that also depends on this fallback,
installing GRUB there will make that operating system temporarily
unbootable. GRUB can be manually configured later to boot it if necessary.
Force GRUB installation to the EFI removable media path?
<Go Back> <Yes> <No>
```
I always used the "No" option.
As Rick also mentioned, 8 MB - as proposed by me - seems to be too small
for a default installation of GRUB - although it seemed to be just big
enough for all installed files in an earlier try today, but only a few
KiB were left. Hence we should maybe use more in any case. The question
is, how this should work on IBM machines with PReP partition and the 8
MB limit?
So I modified `/lib/partman/recipes-ppc64-powermac_newworld/30atomic` to
use 10 MB as minimum size:
```
$ diff -u 30atomic 30atomic-new
--- 30atomic 2017-10-08 17:51:42.931719980 +0200
+++ 30atomic-new 2017-10-08 17:51:36.799720113 +0200
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
partman-auto/text/atomic_scheme ::
-1 1 1 hfs
+10 10000 10 hfs
$bootable{ }
method{ newworld } .
```
...and restarted from the "Partition disks" step. Then first installed
yaboot as boot loader, to get the `/dev/sda2` partition formatted with
HFS, then mounted `/dev/sda2` to `/target/boot/grub` and then installed
GRUB as boot loader. Although the space on the HFS FS was sufficient:
```
/target/boot/grub # ls -la
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 9 Oct 8 15:29 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Oct 8 15:28 ..
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3 Oct 8 15:29 fonts
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1024 Oct 8 15:29 grubenv
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 40 Oct 8 15:29 locale
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2858 Oct 8 2017 ofboot.b
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 212 Oct 8 15:29 powerpc-ieee1275
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 198212 Oct 8 2017 yaboot
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 681 Oct 8 2017 yaboot.conf
/target/boot/grub # df -h
Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
none 891.1M 1.6M 889.6M 0% /run
devtmpfs 4.1G 0 4.1G 0% /dev
/dev/sda3 907.5G 1.1G 860.2G 0% /target
/dev/sda3 907.5G 1.1G 860.2G 0% /dev/.static/dev
devtmpfs 4.1G 0 4.1G 0% /target/dev
/dev/sda2 9.5M 8.4M 1.1M 88% /target/boot/grub
/dev/sr0 225.3M 225.3M 0 100% /cdrom
```
...the installation of GRUB failed with the following messages:
```
Oct 8 15:29:29 grub-installer: info: Installing grub on 'dummy'
Oct 8 15:29:30 grub-installer: info: grub-install does not support
--no-floppy
Oct 8 15:29:41 grub-installer: info: Running chroot /target
grub-install --force "dummy"
Oct 8 15:29:41 grub-installer: Installing for powerpc-ieee1275 platform.
Oct 8 15:29:45 grub-installer: grub-install: error: cannot find a GRUB
drive for dummy. Check your device.map.
Oct 8 15:29:45 grub-installer: error: Running 'grub-install --force
"dummy"' failed.
Oct 8 15:29:51 main-menu[4594]: (process:25232): File descriptor 3
(pipe:[14575]) leaked on lvdisplay invocation. Parent PID 25798: /bin/sh
Oct 8 15:29:51 main-menu[4594]: (process:25232): File descriptor 4
(/dev/pts/6) leaked on lvdisplay invocation. Parent PID 25798: /bin/sh
Oct 8 15:29:51 main-menu[4594]: (process:25232): File descriptor 5
(/dev/pts/6) leaked on lvdisplay invocation. Parent PID 25798: /bin/sh
Oct 8 15:29:51 main-menu[4594]: (process:25232): File descriptor 6
(/dev/pts/6) leaked on lvdisplay invocation. Parent PID 25798: /bin/sh
Oct 8 15:29:51 main-menu[4594]: (process:25232): Volume group "sda"
not found
Oct 8 15:29:51 main-menu[4594]: (process:25232): Cannot process
volume group sda
Oct 8 15:29:51 main-menu[4594]: WARNING **: Configuring
'grub-installer' failed with error code 1
Oct 8 15:29:51 main-menu[4594]: WARNING **: Menu item 'grub-installer'
failed.
```
Cheers,
Frank
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