GRUB testers on SPARC needed

[Frank Scheiner]

Hi,

On 02/19/2018 02:37 PM, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
>> Installing it **and** using the mentioned `grub-install` command to 
>> install it on the `/boot` partition over the previous version 
>> (2.02-2+sparc64.3) breaks booting with GRUB2:
> 
> Yes, this is something I don't have any control over. The grub2 package 
> will
> break every time on sparc64 until GRUB 2.04 has been released with 
> hopefully
> all of Eric's patches merged.

I see.

> 
> Alternatively, you can try to convince Debian's GRUB maintainers (CC'ed) 
> that
> they will merge my patch from #854568 [1].

If they couldn't be convinced by you despite all your hard work on 
Debian Ports, not even for the experimental suite, why should they 
bother about me? :-)

But if someone cares: GRUB2 (w/those patches) allows network booting for 
sparc64 w/modern (aka huge) kernels and initram file systems - something 
that wasn't working properly (if at all) for a long time on sparc64.

Though the selection of per MAC/IP address configuration files during 
startup as of now is in fact not on par with other network capable boot 
loaders like pxelinux or yaboot, one can still script together a 
somewhat similar method (see [1]).

[1]: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=873406#c1

In addition it works on every sparc64 (Sun-4u, Sun-4v) machine I've 
tested so far.

Hence I consider it a must have for sparc64. And my machines see things 
the same way. :-)

Cheers,
Frank