Re: Starting up Debian on a T5120

[Chris Ross <cross+debian@distal.com>]

On Sat, May 05, 2018 at 01:35:06AM +0100, James Clarke wrote:
> For building, I imagine the way to do it is:
> 
> 1. Add:
>        deb [arch=all] http://deb.debian.org/debian unstable contrib non-free
>        deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free
>    to your sources.list (or another mirror of your choice), so you can get the
>    arch:all .debs from the main archive (note /debian rather than /debian-ports),
>    as well as the sources. Also note that there's no "main" component listed for
>    the first entry.
> 
> 2. apt update
> 
> 3. apt source zfs-linux
> 
> 4. apt build-dep zfs-linux
> 
> 5. cd zfs-linux-0.7.6
> 
> 6. dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc -B
> 
> You should then have all the sparc64 .debs in the parent directory which you can
> install with "apt install /path/to/foo.deb".

  Thanks.  This worked, as you expected.  The question I have now is what to
install.  I have 9 .deb files, but none of them is "zfs-dkms", which is one
of the packages that zfsonlinux says to install:

https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/wiki/Debian

  I have:

-rw-r--r-- 1 cross   41444 May  5 22:50 libnvpair1linux_0.7.6-1_sparc64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 cross   50680 May  5 22:50 libuutil1linux_0.7.6-1_sparc64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 cross  119312 May  5 22:50 libzfs2linux_0.7.6-1_sparc64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 cross  966516 May  5 22:51 libzfslinux-dev_0.7.6-1_sparc64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 cross  460448 May  5 22:50 libzpool2linux_0.7.6-1_sparc64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 cross 3580280 May  5 22:50 zfs-dbg_0.7.6-1_sparc64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 cross 2481164 May  5 22:51 zfs-test_0.7.6-1_sparc64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 cross  328128 May  5 22:50 zfsutils-linux_0.7.6-1_sparc64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 cross   55252 May  5 22:50 zfs-zed_0.7.6-1_sparc64.deb

  Looking at the build logs I see some references to dkms, including:

checking for dkms.conf file... not found

  ...but I don't assume that indicates a problem.  I see it do:

make[1]: Entering directory '/home/cross/zfs-linux-0.7.6'
dh_dkms -V 0.7.6
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/cross/zfs-linux-0.7.6'

  but with no other information, I don't know what happened (or didn't) there.

> As far as booting goes, I have no idea. I'm almost certain you'd need to be using
> grub not silo, but beyond that your prior experience likely means you know more
> than me. Generating installer images is awkward, so it may just be easiest to clone
> your system to a new ZFS volume, boot to that and then reclaim the ext4 space.
> Perhaps there's a better way that someone here knows?

  It looks like I had the same thought.  I realize now I'm running on sdd, and
sda sdb and sdc are waiting for me to do something useful with them. So at least
I don't need to figure out the installer stuff.  I will still need to figure
out how to boot, which the above debian page suggests I want zfs-initramfs
package.  But I doubt that alone is enough.  And, I don't know much about
grub vs silo vs anything else that Linux uses to boot.  

  Hopefully someone else has some more pointers for me at this point.  Thank
you much for these!

            - Chris