Debian PowerPc installer initramfs-tools generates malformed yaboot.conf created when alternate partitions use UUID= in fstab

[Rogério Brito]

Hi there, Rick.

(I am including the pkg-grub-devel list here, as it may be interesting
to them).

On Jul 14 2010, Rick Thomas wrote:
> I'm willing to give it a try on some of my test machines.
> 
> How do I go about installing/testing Grub2 ?

I wrote a summary of what I did some time ago:

  http://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2010/06/msg00028.html

One particular point that may not be that obvious is that your current
HFS partition may not be big enough to hold an initial grub2 image with
all the modules (those found in /usr/lib/grub/powerpc-ieee1275/).

Some of the modules may not be necessary, if you are only using
something like ext{2,3,4} on your system: them, XFS, JFS, and Co. can be
avoided to be included in that binary.

Another thing that is worth noting is that the command to create that
initial image seems to have been changed, and it should be grub-mkimage
with a parameter --format=powerpc-ieee1275, instead of grub-mkelfimage.

(Fear not: the comments above may not make sense if you have not yet
tried to play with grub2, but they will after you read my e-mail listed
above).

Another slight problem that may make the automatic installation not so
obvious is that the grub.cfg file will probably list the partition that
you will be booting from as "(hd0,<foo>)", where it currently needs to be
"(hd,<foo>)", without the zero after "hd".

I don't know if the hd0 string that the grub configuration puts in the
grub.cfg is used with/taken from OpenFirmware (in case it would be the
hd alias that OpenFirmware uses for the disk), but flexibilizing this
for systems that may have more than one HD would be desireable (i.e.,
stay with the numbering with the HDs).

But that doesn't prevent one from using grub2 right now.


Hope that this helps,

-- 
Rogério Brito : rbrito@{ime.usp.br,gmail.com} : GPG key 1024D/7C2CAEB8
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