Bug#882076: Fwd: [PATCH v2 4/5] Patch the CHRP boot script

[Mathieu Malaterre]

Control: tags -1 confirmed


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On Tue, 2017-11-21 at 09:56 +0100, Mathieu Malaterre wrote:
> Hi Ben,
>
> Sorry for the direct question, but I assumed you would know the
> answer. We are currently trying to replace yaboot with grub-ieee1275
> in debian-installer, but are facing a very small issue, namely with OF
> path handling. It appears that on Apple hardware only `ofpath` from
> Yaboot returns the correct path. Are you using grub on any of your
> Apple hardware ? Thanks much for comments.

+Nathan

I have used grub on Apple systems in the past but it's quite possible
that I ended up fixing up the path by hand. To be honest I haven't
booted any of my Apple systems in a while, but I still have some I
can dig out to test if needed.

Some more comments below...

> See below for full context.
>
> On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 7:51 AM, Frank Scheiner <frank.scheiner at web.de> wrote:
> > Hi Rick,
> >
> > On 11/21/2017 02:48 AM, Rick Thomas wrote:
> > >
> > > If you can tell me *exactly* what to do, and I don’t have to set up an
> > > installation environment to do it, I’ll be happy to test ofpathname vs
> > > ofpath vs devalias on my PowerPC test machine farm.
> >
> >
> > Well, to be on the safe side, I think you need to use the latest versions of
> > ofpath and ofpathname, hence running Debian Sid could be the easiest way to
> > make sure this is the case.
> >
> > You need to have a disk installed, because ofpath and IIC also ofpathname do
> > not or cannot translate non existing device aliases to OF paths.
> >
> > In general the commands I ran for the p5 520Q below should do. Assuming that
> > the output of ofpathname will always be wrong for Power Macs, it should be
> > sufficient to check only one partition.
> >
> > I think devalias does only save/return OF paths up to the disk level, but
> > not up to the partition level. But the disk level should already be
> > sufficient to detect differences to ofpath and/or ofpathname.
> >
> > You have to go to OF to run devalias, but with a glass console you won't be
> > able to copy the output. There are ways to interact with the OF via telnet
> > from another machine (see [1] and possibly [2]), but I haven't tried this
> > yet.
> >
> > [1]:
> > https://web.archive.org/web/20040202053614/http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn2004.html
> >
> > [2]:
> > https://web.archive.org/web/20040202060137/http://developer.apple.com:80/technotes/tn/tn2023.html
> >
> > >
> > > I have the following machines:
> > >      Power Mac G5 11,2,
> > >      Power Mac G5  7,2  (I think — it’s turned off right now)
> > >      Mac mini G4 10,1
> >
> >
> > I have these types available, too, "except" for the 7,3 which currently
> > won't start up correctly.
> >
> > Here's the output of ofpath and ofpathname for /dev/sda2 on the my Mac mini
> > (10,1):
> > ```
> > root at mac-mini:~# ofpath /dev/sda2
> > /pci at f4000000/ata-6 at d/@0:2
> >
> > root at mac-mini:~# ofpathname /dev/sda2
> > /usr/sbin/ofpathname: line 812: warning: command substitution: ignored null
> > byte in input
> > /pci at f4000000/ata-6 at d/scsi at 0/sd at 0,0

So here, ofpathname gets confused by the fact that Linux shows ATA
devices as scsi (which is a Linux'ism). ofpath has workarounds to deal
with that which should probably be ported over.

> >
> > Also interesting, it looks like ofpathname cannot even give a "correct"
> > result for an IBM machine, at least not for my p5 520Q:
> > ```
> > root at p5-520q:~# lsblk
> > NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
> > sda      8:0    0 136.7G  0 disk
> > ├─sda1   8:1    0     7M  0 part
> > ├─sda2   8:2    0 131.1G  0 part
> > ├─sda3   8:3    0     1K  0 part
> > └─sda5   8:5    0   5.6G  0 part
> > sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom
> >
> > root at p5-520q:~# ofpath /dev/sda1
> > /pci at 800000020000003/pci at 2,4/pci1069,b166 at 1/scsi at 0/@3:1
> >
> > root at p5-520q:~# ofpathname /dev/sda1
> > /pci at 800000020000003/pci at 2,4/pci1069,b166 at 1/scsi at 0/sd at 3,0
> >
> > root at p5-520q:~# ofpath /dev/sda2
> > /pci at 800000020000003/pci at 2,4/pci1069,b166 at 1/scsi at 0/@3:2
> >
> > root at p5-520q:~# ofpathname /dev/sda2
> > /pci at 800000020000003/pci at 2,4/pci1069,b166 at 1/scsi at 0/sd at 3,0
> > ```
> >
> > Please notice that ofpathname returns the same result for two different
> > partitions. :-/

Ouch. I think ofpathname is still maintained by some of our IBM guys
isn't it ? Might be worth digging there (or fixing it up !).

Nathan, do you know anything about this ?

> > >      Mac G4 3,4
> > >      Mac G4 dual core 3,6
> >
> >
> > Results for these machines would be helpful. It should work to
> > install/upgrade to Debian Sid on one machine only and just move the disk to
> > the other machine later on for testing.

I can test if you are willing to fix the script :)

Cheers,
Ben.