Re: Debian 11 installer crashed and reboot
On 8/19/2021 3:11 PM, Andy Smith wrote:
Hi Chuck,
On Tue, Aug 17, 2021 at 08:04:43AM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
After some testing of the Debian 11 installer on Xen
(using the debian-11.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso), I find that
this image only supports installation into a Xen PV guest,
the guest always crashes and reboots for either a BIOS
or OVMF boot into an HVM Xen guest.
Could you report this to Debian's Xen team as a bug? Perhaps it is
as simple as needing different kernel options in the netinst
installer kernel given that the full install works under HVM?
The Debian Xen team is very under-resourced for human help and it
has been a long time since they have managed to keep the version in
stable to a recent and supported one upstream. If you run a Xen dom0
on Debian I think really you need to be building your own packages
or using the Debian Xen team's packages from sid.
The stable packaged 4.11 hypervisor is out of even security support
upstream so it's not really suitable for production use. I don't
think the Debian Xen team would recommend using it but would instead
suggest using their newer package that;s in sid (on stable) and
test/report bigs against that. But let's get this reported.
I'm not skilled enough in Debian package building to help the team
but I do still report bigs sometimes; for production use I am
building packages from newer upstream source.
For this problem I can't help as I don't run HVM guests (only PV and
PVH).
The Debian Xen team mailing list is at:
https://alioth-lists.debian.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pkg-xen-devel
Cheers,
Andy
I just discovered this already has been reported as a bug:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=983357
I don't know when an official fix will come , but I have come up with
a workaround that works for me:
This fix might also work on the live ISO images that are also reported
to crash and reboot in Xen HVM domUs.
Prerequisites: xorriso and initramfs-tools packages installed
Download/copy debian-11.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso into current working
directory:
Step 1: Mount the original iso:
mkdir CD
sudo mount -o ro -t iso9660 debian-11.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso CD
Step 2: Copy the initrd.gz file we need to modify:
cp -p CD/install.amd/initrd.gz .
Step 4: Unmount the original iso:
sudo umount CD
Step 5: As root, extract the initramfs into a working directory:
sudo unmkinitramfs initrd.gz initramfs
Step 6: As root, edit the start-udev script that causes the crash and
reboot:
sudo vi initramfs/lib/debian-installer/start-udev
In the start-udev script change this line:
udevadm trigger --action=add
to
dmesg | grep DMI: | grep 'Xen HVM domU' || udevadm trigger --action=add
and save the file
This change should only disable the udevadm trigger in Xen HVM DomUs.
Step 7: Re-pack the initrd into a new initrd file:
cd initramfs
find . | sort | sudo cpio --reproducible --quiet -o -H newc > ../newinitrd
cd ..
gzip -v9f newinitrd
Step 8: Create the new installation ISO:
cp -p debian-11.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso debian-11.0.0-amd64-xenhvm-netinst.iso
xorriso -dev debian-11.0.0-amd64-xenhvm-netinst.iso -boot_image any keep \
-map newinitrd.gz /install.amd/initrd.gz
Optional Step 9: Clean up
sudo rm -r initramfs newinitrd.gz initrd.gz
The ISO image debian-11.0.0-amd64-xenhvm-netinst.iso can now be used to
install
Debian bullseye in a Xen HVM Domu. On the main menu, choose the Install
option,
not the graphical or expert options, in order to boot using the modified
initrd.gz ramdisk.
Cheers,
Chuck Zmudzinski
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