Bug#606441: unblock: yaboot/1.3.13a-1squeeze1
On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 10:33:44PM -0500, Milan Kupcevic wrote:
> Well, the whole situation you are describing actually motivated me to do
> something about it. And I did what was possible to do in short period of
> time.
>
> >
> >> Any bugreport I could read?
> >
> > Well given I don't even know if an IBM p520 power6+ machine is expected to
> > work with Debian, I haven't filled one. I pointed out a few drivers and
> > other issues I hit, although they seemed to get no interest from anyone.
> > There is a bug report in grub2 (upstream) about the issues left to solve
> > for the IBM pseries servers.
>
> You have hands on that machine, I do not. Fix the issue, produce patch,
> we are eager to see the solution. Also take a look at this thread, we
> discuss about IBM p520 power6+ machine:
>
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2010/12/msg00032.html
Well the video=ofonly seemed normal to me given the installer even
mentions it as sometimes needed. The dual reboot thing I had noticed
a few times, but I must admit I hadn't really put much thought into why
it happened sometimes.
> > grub2 does work once you manually generate the image and install it on a
> > boot partition, and it supports software raid (something yaboot didn't,
> > although it appears the 1.3.16 version now in unstable might), so it
> > worked out OK for me.
>
> Please provide fully working and tested yaboot 1.3.16 Debian package and
> propose its upload, I'm sure it will override this one. Or even better,
> provide fully functional grub2 package for power platform. I'm sure it
> will get approved quickly.
Well it is already uploaded in unstable. So someone already did that
on December 1st (that someone being the long missed debian maintainer
of yaboot).
As for grub2, I think I will go try the latest version and see if any
of the proposed patches for not having devaliases got in. If so, fixing
grub-install for the pseries should be pretty simple.
Of course even if 1.99 in experimental (which has some devalias fixes
in it by the looks of it) works, I doubt squeeze wants to go to it if
it puts x86 booting at risk given it is a less tested version.
> If we do not get yaboot 1.3.13a-1squeeze1 and fixed yaboot-installer bug
> #605932 into squeeze, it will be uninstallable, without manual tweaking,
> on all machines with SATA, SAS, and SCSI controllers (this includes all
> Mac G5 machines). All Mac G5 machines also need fixed initramfs-tools
> bug #603981.
Certainly 1.3.13a-1squeeze1 fixing compatibility with the new kernel on
machines yaboot always worked on is very useful and worthwhile.
> FYI: a bug report #605774 regarding ehea network driver was submitted on
> December 03, 2010 by Xavier Grave and was fixed in SVN promptly. It will
> get to squeeze install CD soon.
Yeah I noticed.
> And finally we should get back to the subject of this message. Do you
> advocate for or against getting yaboot/1.3.13a-1squeeze1 into squeeze?
I am not against yaboot/1.3.13a-1squeeze1. It is certainly better than
what was there before. But I would be much more for allowing 1.3.16
currently in unstable, but given it only gained the patches from the
1.3.13a-1squeeze1 version yesterday, I doubt that's going to happen.
A release is supposed to happen soon after all.
> Why, or why not?
I am mainly amazed anyone would bother patching an old version with
known failures that are known to be addressed in newer versions (for
which there are bug reports requesting the new version), especially when
that new version is already uploaded in unstable. Maybe it wasn't
uploaded yet when this patched version was being made.
I have been pretty much resigned to the fact that grub2 isn't quite ready
on powerpc, so I figured I would just work to make sure the next release
(after Squeeze) worked with grub2 on IBM power boxes so my life will
be easier. In the mean time I would continue to manually maintain a
patched grub2 that works on the box I run. It just seems to late to
teach the installer about a new partitioning scheme on the IBM powerpc
machines to support grub2.
Of course I had also thought yaboot development was dead (so software raid
support would never happen), and that a package update in Debian wasn't
going to happen anyhow, so grub2 was the only thing worth persuing, but
apparently that has changed this summer with a new upstream maintainer
and new this month a new Debian package, supposedly with software raid
support.
--
Len Sorensen
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