Hi Hao!
On 5/17/20 6:29 AM, H wrote:
> In my understanding these rollouts are built from certain config sets. Just
> wondering, does that mean the fix you pushed to 2020-04-19 is not
> permanent? Or is there anything else that possibly changed that caused a
> regression?
Basically yes, but let me explain.
In order to install GRUB during installation, debian-instaleller uses the
package "grub-installer" which is a so-called udeb (a micro-deb) that is
installable in the debian-installer environment only.
grub-installer contains a script with platform-specific code [1] to install
GRUB on different targets. One of these targets are powerpc/powermac_newworld and
ppc64/powermac_newworld, i.e. 32-bit and 64-bit PowerPC machines with NewWorld
ROMs.
To install GRUB on these systems, one needs to make sure the partitioning is
correct and the first partition is formatted with HFS+, then the proper
OpenFirmware path is matched to a Linux device path (/dev/sdX). This involves
the packages partman-auto, partman-newworld, powerpc-utils and hfsprogs.
The necessary changes in powerpc-utils package are permanent and I have sent
my patches upstream [3]. The changes for partman-auto, partman-newworld
and grub-installer are not permanent (but only local builds, hence the
"+mac" version number) because the changes are a bit hacky, they do
work however but they get overridden once new versions of the partman-auto
and grub-installer packages are uploaded by other members of the debian-installer
team (we could blacklist updates to these packages on powerpc and ppc64
though but since they affect image builds only and no installed systems,
it's not that critical) - partman-newworld is not affected but I would
like to get rid of that package.
Anyway, in order to make these changes permanent, a proper solution requires
first that the hfsprogs package gets updated and a hfsprogs-udeb package
is added which is what I am planning to do next. However, since hfsprogs
has a few problems on its own, this will take some more elbow grease until
I have the package in the shape needed (also because of Apple's APSL license
which some folk in Debian consider non-DFSG-compliant - something I disagree
with).
Once we have a working hfsprogs-udeb, the necessary changes to grub-installer
and partman-auto will be much smaller and partman-newworld can hopefully
be dropped as partman-auto just needs to specify a partition layout with
the necessary HFS+ partition.
In any case, to make things happen faster, I'm always looking for contributors.
PS: New images with the temporary changes back in are coming shortly.
PPS: As for the missing firmware, this is also work-in-progress but this
requires changes to the Debian Ports FTP server to include contrib
and non-free which is something that needs to be done by Aurelien
Jarno.
Thanks,
Adrian
> [1] https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/grub-installer/-/blob/master/grub-installer
> [2] https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/grub-installer/-/merge_requests/2
> [3] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/powerpc-utils-devel/bhXwIRgL20k
--
.''`. 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