Quite a late email cause I forgot to give a status update on the server After intensive testing, we managed to get SID to install on the pSeries 550 - What we had to do was obtain the last Debian SID ppc64 netinst which still included Yaboot as a bootloader "*during install*" - this ended up being the May 20th 2019 ISO and we ended up still using a USB to avoid wasting too many CD's, we then had to load into expert mode and choose to install Yaboot as a bootloader instead of GRUB (we decided to use an all in / ext3 partition for best compatibility) - once installation was completed, everything worked as expected
So the important factors we came to conclude was that; the pSeries (550 but maybe other models too) cannot boot from GRUB, potentially a firmware issue but not confirmed as the system log reports no errors/warnings Yaboot has to be installed by the Debian installer itself, manual installation of Yaboot (chroot/rescue mode) will result in a broken Yaboot which is unable to load it's own configuration file (Results in issue stated when we first asked for help - Unsure if it's yabootconfig or yaboot itself because in both cases the system still can't detect the .conf and neither process throws any anomalies in the logs during yabootconfig/installing to PreP) We would like to thank everyone for their help and suggestions and I hope that our discoveries help in anyway If you'd like to know more then don't hesitate to ask Deinsti and Daniel On Wed, 4 Nov 2020 at 14:59, Lennart Sorensen <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, Nov 04, 2020 at 02:48:03PM +0000, Deinsti Suski wrote: > > Hello Len > > > > 1; Yes, we are using the MBR Partition table > > 2; the PreP partition is 8MB and has the Boot flag set to on > > 3; Debian is running on bare-metal, no hypervisor involved > > 3; Correct, the installer boots with no issues at all and it's only after > > the reboot when try to boot the installation from the HDD that both > > bootloaders just stall/fail > > 4; We are using a 1GB USB Memory stick as the installation media > > 5; we are using the Debian 10 SID NETINST for PPC64 dated 2020-05-30, the > > reason we're not using the latest snapshot is because the latest one > > (2020-10-13) fails with 'missing-firmware /dev/.udev missing firmware' > and > > the installation media fails to mount > > > > If you need any more information don't hesitate to ask > > Well you are doing everything I remember doing (although at the time I > was using powerpc not ppc64 but I doubt that matters), and I used a CD, > not USB to boot. No idea if that makes any difference. Hopefully it > isn't confused by which disk is sda vs sdb due to the usb stick. > > I had successful installs in the past (but probably 5 or 6 years ago now) > on p520 (power6) and p710 (power7) hardware both booting from CD. > > -- > Len Sorensen >
