Bug#664128: debian-installer: please default to grub-ieee1275 on powerpc instead of yaboot
On 10/22/2012 05:55 PM, Milan Kupcevic wrote: We can allow d-i grub installation on powerpc machines for wheezy, but not make it default. [...] Manual creation of the appropriate partition in d-i (/boot/grub) will enable grub installation in wheezy d-i. Thus, we will be able to experiment with d-i grub installation on powerpc machines. ok, this sounds like a good step to me. Are you saying this is present in the current wheezy beta3 ? I'm also happy to test powerpc d-i images that use grub-ieee1275 if you need testers. Do you have access to any IBM Power machines? I have no IBM Power machines, but i have older PowerPC Apple hardware coming out of my ears. Let me know if you want specific tests run. --dkg signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Bug#664128: debian-installer: please default to grub-ieee1275 on powerpc instead of yaboot
On 10/23/2012 09:52 AM, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
On 10/22/2012 05:55 PM, Milan Kupcevic wrote:
We can allow d-i grub installation on powerpc machines for wheezy, but
not make it default.
[...]
Manual creation of the appropriate partition in d-i (/boot/grub) will
enable grub installation in wheezy d-i. Thus, we will be able to
experiment with d-i grub installation on powerpc machines.
ok, this sounds like a good step to me. Are you saying this is present
in the current wheezy beta3 ?
No. It will eventually hit the daily builds soon. See attachment.
Milan
commit cf2fc86abf0fd34963afb49047c21e94a2cde40e
Author: Milan Kupcevic mi...@physics.harvard.edu
Date: Mon Oct 22 17:46:06 2012 -0400
Allow grub installation on PowerPC machines
* Allow grub installation on PowerPC machines if /boot/grub partition
is present. Closes: #664128
diff --git a/debian/changelog b/debian/changelog
index 9105cdb..204cc11 100644
--- a/debian/changelog
+++ b/debian/changelog
@@ -1,3 +1,10 @@
+grub-installer (1.83) UNRELEASED; urgency=low
+
+ * Allow grub installation on PowerPC machines if /boot/grub partition
+is present. Closes: #664128
+
+ -- Milan Kupcevic mi...@physics.harvard.edu Mon, 22 Oct 2012 17:39:07 -0400
+
grub-installer (1.82) unstable; urgency=low
[ Updated translations ]
diff --git a/debian/isinstallable b/debian/isinstallable
index e66bac1..89fadb7 100755
--- a/debian/isinstallable
+++ b/debian/isinstallable
@@ -15,11 +15,11 @@ case $ARCH in
exit 1
fi
;;
-powerpc/chrp_pegasos)
- ;;
powerpc/*)
- log GRUB not yet usable on PowerPC systems other than Pegasos/Efika
- exit 1
+ mount | grep on /target/boot/grub 12 || {
+ log GRUB requires OF bootable partition mounted at /boot/grub on PowerPC systems
+ exit 1
+ }
;;
mipsel/loongson-2f)
;;
signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Bug#664128: debian-installer: please default to grub-ieee1275 on powerpc instead of yaboot
On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 10:18:00AM -0400, Milan Kupcevic wrote:
On 10/23/2012 09:52 AM, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
On 10/22/2012 05:55 PM, Milan Kupcevic wrote:
We can allow d-i grub installation on powerpc machines for wheezy, but
not make it default.
[...]
Manual creation of the appropriate partition in d-i (/boot/grub) will
enable grub installation in wheezy d-i. Thus, we will be able to
experiment with d-i grub installation on powerpc machines.
ok, this sounds like a good step to me. Are you saying this is present
in the current wheezy beta3 ?
No. It will eventually hit the daily builds soon. See attachment.
Milan
commit cf2fc86abf0fd34963afb49047c21e94a2cde40e
Author: Milan Kupcevic mi...@physics.harvard.edu
Date: Mon Oct 22 17:46:06 2012 -0400
Allow grub installation on PowerPC machines
* Allow grub installation on PowerPC machines if /boot/grub partition
is present. Closes: #664128
diff --git a/debian/changelog b/debian/changelog
index 9105cdb..204cc11 100644
--- a/debian/changelog
+++ b/debian/changelog
@@ -1,3 +1,10 @@
+grub-installer (1.83) UNRELEASED; urgency=low
+
+ * Allow grub installation on PowerPC machines if /boot/grub partition
+is present. Closes: #664128
+
+ -- Milan Kupcevic mi...@physics.harvard.edu Mon, 22 Oct 2012 17:39:07
-0400
+
grub-installer (1.82) unstable; urgency=low
[ Updated translations ]
diff --git a/debian/isinstallable b/debian/isinstallable
index e66bac1..89fadb7 100755
--- a/debian/isinstallable
+++ b/debian/isinstallable
@@ -15,11 +15,11 @@ case $ARCH in
exit 1
fi
;;
-powerpc/chrp_pegasos)
- ;;
powerpc/*)
- log GRUB not yet usable on PowerPC systems other than Pegasos/Efika
- exit 1
+ mount | grep on /target/boot/grub 12 || {
+ log GRUB requires OF bootable partition mounted at /boot/grub
on PowerPC systems
+ exit 1
+ }
;;
mipsel/loongson-2f)
;;
And that would be wrong. That is NOT how grub works on IBM powerpc
machines. That is true of powermac and possible a few other types.
The IBM OF does NOT support filesystems. It executes the ELF binary in
the PReP partition, which can not be mounted. grub-install simply dd's
the grub core image into that partition and that's it. When creating the
image it passes and argument to the grub-mkimage to set which partition
to look at to get the grub modules and config files since in the IBM
case it won't be the boot partition (since it has no filesystem).
So please don't make such a wrong change. You will just make life harder
for IBM users.
The correct thing to check for on an IBM is that a PReP boot type
partition exists. That is all. It can not be mounted.
For example:
root@rceng03:~# parted
GNU Parted 2.3
Using /dev/sda
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) print
Model: IBM MBE2147RC (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 147GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End SizeType File system Flags
1 1049kB 8389kB 7340kB primary boot, prep
2 8389kB 10.0GB 10.0GB primary raid
3 10.0GB 147GB 137GB primary raid
In this case the setup is RAID1 across sd[abc]2 for / and RAID5 across
sd[abc]3 for LVM.
grub is happily installed to /dev/sda1 (and sdb1 and sdc1 as well for
redundancy) using grub-install. This works.
--
Len Sorensen
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org
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Bug#664128: debian-installer: please default to grub-ieee1275 on powerpc instead of yaboot
clone 664128 -1
retitle -1 Allow grub installation on IBM Power machines
thanks
On 10/23/2012 11:36 AM, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 10:18:00AM -0400, Milan Kupcevic wrote:
On 10/23/2012 09:52 AM, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote:
On 10/22/2012 05:55 PM, Milan Kupcevic wrote:
We can allow d-i grub installation on powerpc machines for wheezy, but
not make it default.
[...]
Manual creation of the appropriate partition in d-i (/boot/grub) will
enable grub installation in wheezy d-i. Thus, we will be able to
experiment with d-i grub installation on powerpc machines.
ok, this sounds like a good step to me. Are you saying this is present
in the current wheezy beta3 ?
No. It will eventually hit the daily builds soon. See attachment.
Milan
commit cf2fc86abf0fd34963afb49047c21e94a2cde40e
Author: Milan Kupcevic mi...@physics.harvard.edu
Date: Mon Oct 22 17:46:06 2012 -0400
Allow grub installation on PowerPC machines
* Allow grub installation on PowerPC machines if /boot/grub partition
is present. Closes: #664128
diff --git a/debian/changelog b/debian/changelog
index 9105cdb..204cc11 100644
--- a/debian/changelog
+++ b/debian/changelog
@@ -1,3 +1,10 @@
+grub-installer (1.83) UNRELEASED; urgency=low
+
+ * Allow grub installation on PowerPC machines if /boot/grub partition
+is present. Closes: #664128
+
+ -- Milan Kupcevic mi...@physics.harvard.edu Mon, 22 Oct 2012 17:39:07
-0400
+
grub-installer (1.82) unstable; urgency=low
[ Updated translations ]
diff --git a/debian/isinstallable b/debian/isinstallable
index e66bac1..89fadb7 100755
--- a/debian/isinstallable
+++ b/debian/isinstallable
@@ -15,11 +15,11 @@ case $ARCH in
exit 1
fi
;;
-powerpc/chrp_pegasos)
-;;
powerpc/*)
-log GRUB not yet usable on PowerPC systems other than Pegasos/Efika
-exit 1
+mount | grep on /target/boot/grub 12 || {
+log GRUB requires OF bootable partition mounted at /boot/grub
on PowerPC systems
+exit 1
+}
;;
mipsel/loongson-2f)
;;
And that would be wrong. That is NOT how grub works on IBM powerpc
machines. That is true of powermac and possible a few other types.
The IBM OF does NOT support filesystems. It executes the ELF binary in
the PReP partition, which can not be mounted.
IBM Firmware does support filesystems, just not the same filesystems as
Macs and Pegasos. IBM Firmware likes FAT and iso9660, Mac wants HFS,
while Pegasos works with ext2, AFFS, and iso9660.
If you put a bootloader on FAT filesystem you could put other meta
information in /ppc/bootinfo.txt file so that IBM Firmware and other IBM
boot management tools can get full textual description and optionally an
icon of the bootable OS. It would make it possible to dual boot Linux
(GRUB) and AIX while choosing which one you want to boot using standard
IBM tools (ie Multiboot menu). We will see if we want to go this way or
we want to keep resetting firmware variables using '/sbin/nvsetenv' on
Linux and 'bootlist' on AIX when we want to reboot into the other OS.
grub-install simply dd's
the grub core image into that partition and that's it. When creating the
image it passes and argument to the grub-mkimage to set which partition
to look at to get the grub modules and config files since in the IBM
case it won't be the boot partition (since it has no filesystem).
Yaboot installer installs yaboot on IBM Power machines exactly the same way.
So please don't make such a wrong change. You will just make life harder
for IBM users.
This will not make life harder nor easier for IBM users. Grub
installation was not offered on IBM Power machines by d-i until now, and
will not be offered after this particular change.
The correct thing to check for on an IBM is that a PReP boot type
partition exists. That is all. It can not be mounted.
For example:
root@rceng03:~# parted
GNU Parted 2.3
Using /dev/sda
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) print
Model: IBM MBE2147RC (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 147GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End SizeType File system Flags
1 1049kB 8389kB 7340kB primary boot, prep
2 8389kB 10.0GB 10.0GB primary raid
3 10.0GB 147GB 137GB primary raid
In this case the setup is RAID1 across sd[abc]2 for / and RAID5 across
sd[abc]3 for LVM.
grub is happily installed to /dev/sda1 (and sdb1 and sdc1 as well for
redundancy) using grub-install. This works.
Thank you for providing information about your experience with grub on
IBM Power machines. After wheezy release we will go forward with
transition from yaboot to grub. Your experience will be valuable for
further discussion about d-i issues
Bug#664128: debian-installer: please default to grub-ieee1275 on powerpc instead of yaboot
On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 01:06:06PM -0400, Milan Kupcevic wrote: IBM Firmware does support filesystems, just not the same filesystems as Macs and Pegasos. IBM Firmware likes FAT and iso9660, Mac wants HFS, while Pegasos works with ext2, AFFS, and iso9660. If you put a bootloader on FAT filesystem you could put other meta information in /ppc/bootinfo.txt file so that IBM Firmware and other IBM boot management tools can get full textual description and optionally an icon of the bootable OS. It would make it possible to dual boot Linux (GRUB) and AIX while choosing which one you want to boot using standard IBM tools (ie Multiboot menu). We will see if we want to go this way or we want to keep resetting firmware variables using '/sbin/nvsetenv' on Linux and 'bootlist' on AIX when we want to reboot into the other OS. I have never got it to work with a fat filesystem. I have tried on a p710 and a p520. Maybe it worked on older ones. Yaboot installer installs yaboot on IBM Power machines exactly the same way. This will not make life harder nor easier for IBM users. Grub installation was not offered on IBM Power machines by d-i until now, and will not be offered after this particular change. Well it looks like it will if you happen to create the /boot/grub partition, except it won't work that way. So the error message will tell you to do something that won't work. Thank you for providing information about your experience with grub on IBM Power machines. After wheezy release we will go forward with transition from yaboot to grub. Your experience will be valuable for further discussion about d-i issues on IBM Power machines. I will certainly try to help test it at that time. The way I am using it is what grub-install expects on IBM powerpc at this time. I would love to see a working example where you use FAT on an IBM powerpc, because I haven't found any reference to it in any of the documentation or anywhere else, and it has never worked when I tried it. The openfirmware syntax where you specify a file on a filesystem simply never worked on either machine I have here. Seems to work fine on Macs though. I will look up the bootinfo.txt though. Maybe that will provide some hints. Could make grub simpler to work with. -- Len Sorensen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#664128: debian-installer: please default to grub-ieee1275 on powerpc instead of yaboot
tags 691264 -pending thanks On 10/23/2012 01:33 PM, Lennart Sorensen wrote: On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 01:06:06PM -0400, Milan Kupcevic wrote: IBM Firmware does support filesystems, just not the same filesystems as Macs and Pegasos. IBM Firmware likes FAT and iso9660, Mac wants HFS, while Pegasos works with ext2, AFFS, and iso9660. If you put a bootloader on FAT filesystem you could put other meta information in /ppc/bootinfo.txt file so that IBM Firmware and other IBM boot management tools can get full textual description and optionally an icon of the bootable OS. It would make it possible to dual boot Linux (GRUB) and AIX while choosing which one you want to boot using standard IBM tools (ie Multiboot menu). We will see if we want to go this way or we want to keep resetting firmware variables using '/sbin/nvsetenv' on Linux and 'bootlist' on AIX when we want to reboot into the other OS. I have never got it to work with a fat filesystem. I have tried on a p710 and a p520. Maybe it worked on older ones. Yaboot installer installs yaboot on IBM Power machines exactly the same way. This will not make life harder nor easier for IBM users. Grub installation was not offered on IBM Power machines by d-i until now, and will not be offered after this particular change. Well it looks like it will if you happen to create the /boot/grub partition, except it won't work that way. So the error message will tell you to do something that won't work. Partitioning recipe for IBM Power machines already creates PReP partition for yaboot. If we do check for PReP partition in addition to /boot/grub to allow grub installer it will make grub the default bootloader on IBM Power machines for wheezy. This would be great if we are sure that d-i installs grub with no issues. I did not test it, so I'm not quite sure. Thank you for providing information about your experience with grub on IBM Power machines. After wheezy release we will go forward with transition from yaboot to grub. Your experience will be valuable for further discussion about d-i issues on IBM Power machines. I will certainly try to help test it at that time. The way I am using it is what grub-install expects on IBM powerpc at this time. I would love to see a working example where you use FAT on an IBM powerpc, because I haven't found any reference to it in any of the documentation or anywhere else, and it has never worked when I tried it. The openfirmware syntax where you specify a file on a filesystem simply never worked on either machine I have here. Seems to work fine on Macs though. I will look up the bootinfo.txt though. Maybe that will provide some hints. Could make grub simpler to work with. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#664128: debian-installer: please default to grub-ieee1275 on powerpc instead of yaboot
On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 02:03:46PM -0400, Milan Kupcevic wrote: Partitioning recipe for IBM Power machines already creates PReP partition for yaboot. If we do check for PReP partition in addition to /boot/grub to allow grub installer it will make grub the default bootloader on IBM Power machines for wheezy. This would be great if we are sure that d-i installs grub with no issues. I did not test it, so I'm not quite sure. It does seem a bit late for wheezy. And at least yaboot now seems to be a version that might actually work. I seem to recall some issues with ofpathname, but I can't quite remember what they were right now or whether they were fixed or not. A quick check says that yes indeed in wheezy the ofpathname issue (bug 607001) was fixed. Actually given grub is 1.99 in wheezy I think it is safe to say it won't work in a number of cases. 2.00 fixed some endianess issues with software raid among other things that matter to powerpc, which is why I am running grub 2.00 and not 1.99 now. The older versions were OK with the old mdraid format, but not the 1.x format which is of course now the default in debian's installer. -- Len Sorensen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#664128: debian-installer: please default to grub-ieee1275 on powerpc instead of yaboot
On 03/15/2012 03:05 PM, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote: Please have debian-installer on powerpc default to grub-ieee1275 instead of yaboot. We can allow d-i grub installation on powerpc machines for wheezy, but not make it default. Differences in the setup: yaboot expects a ~1MiB bootstrap partition in an apple-formatted disk that is openfirmware-visible. This partition isn't mounted on the running host, but is managed/updated when the admin runs ybin. grub-ieee1275 expects a larger bootstrap partition (~10MiB should be fine) in an apple-formatted disk that is openfirmware-visible. This partition should have a plain HFS (not HFS+) filesystem on it, and should be mounted by the host at /boot/grub. To transition fully to grub on powerpc machines we will have to change partitioning recipes for CHRP IBM, CHRP Pegasos and NewWorld Mac machines. This will have to wait for jessie. Manual creation of the appropriate partition in d-i (/boot/grub) will enable grub installation in wheezy d-i. Thus, we will be able to experiment with d-i grub installation on powerpc machines. Users of grub-ieee1275 probably therefore also want to have hfsprogs installed on their system for /sbin/fsck.hfs so that routine filesystem checks at boot time can proceed for the filesystem mounted at /boot/grub. I agree. I'm also happy to test powerpc d-i images that use grub-ieee1275 if you need testers. Do you have access to any IBM Power machines? Milan signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Bug#664128: debian-installer: please default to grub-ieee1275 on powerpc instead of yaboot
On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 05:55:58PM -0400, Milan Kupcevic wrote: To transition fully to grub on powerpc machines we will have to change partitioning recipes for CHRP IBM, CHRP Pegasos and NewWorld Mac machines. This will have to wait for jessie. Manual creation of the appropriate partition in d-i (/boot/grub) will enable grub installation in wheezy d-i. Thus, we will be able to experiment with d-i grub installation on powerpc machines. You don't need a seperate partition for /boot/grub or /boot. All you need is a PReP boot partition of 1MB or whatever is convinient to make. The rest can go on / I agree. Well if they have a powermac. No use on an IBM. Do you have access to any IBM Power machines? We have two here. Of course they have been using grub for 3 years now given yaboot was completely broken (on IBMs) in lenny. -- Len Sorensen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#664128: debian-installer: please default to grub-ieee1275 on powerpc instead of yaboot
Package: debian-installer Severity: wishlist grub-ieee1275 is a powerful and effective bootloader for powerpc machines. It is significantly more flexible at runtime than yaboot, and provides a user experience more roughly comparable with installs on i386 and amd64 machines. Please have debian-installer on powerpc default to grub-ieee1275 instead of yaboot. Differences in the setup: yaboot expects a ~1MiB bootstrap partition in an apple-formatted disk that is openfirmware-visible. This partition isn't mounted on the running host, but is managed/updated when the admin runs ybin. grub-ieee1275 expects a larger bootstrap partition (~10MiB should be fine) in an apple-formatted disk that is openfirmware-visible. This partition should have a plain HFS (not HFS+) filesystem on it, and should be mounted by the host at /boot/grub. Users of grub-ieee1275 probably therefore also want to have hfsprogs installed on their system for /sbin/fsck.hfs so that routine filesystem checks at boot time can proceed for the filesystem mounted at /boot/grub. - If you need help or advice on pursuing this transition, phcoder has indicated that he would be happy to discuss it on the upstream mailing list: Grub 2 Development List grub-de...@gnu.org I'm also happy to test powerpc d-i images that use grub-ieee1275 if you need testers. Thanks for your work on d-i! Regards, --dkg pgptsJPbuA0VA.pgp Description: PGP signature
