On 1/28/19 6:53 AM, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote: > On 1/28/19 2:30 PM, Rick Thomas wrote: >>> Yaboot is unmaintained upstream and does not support modern ext4 features. >>> In >>> order for Yaboot to work properly, you have to turn certain features in ext4 >>> off, otherwise it won't work and the boot fails. >>> >>> Unless someone picks up maintenance work on Yaboot and makes it work with >>> modern ext4 versions, I don’t see any particular reason to keep Yaboot. >> It’s not necessary to make yaboot work with modern ext4. It’s only necessary >> to have a separate /boot partition which is ext2, as is the current procedure >> when the user chooses LVM partitioning. Yaboot already requires a separate >> hfs >> bootstrap partition, so I don’t think having a separate ext2 /boot is that >> much of a stretch. > But again, what is the exact gain in keeping Yaboot? Does Yaboot have any > features which you are missing in GRUB?
If Yaboot works but GRUB doesn't, that's the gain in using Yaboot at this point. I haven't tested GRUB on a G5; maybe it works there. I've confirmed that GRUB, at least the one on the Debian 10/sid CD, doesn't work on a PowerBook G3 Lombard (or at least its installation fails). I think the AppleBoot partition needs to be HFS (would HFS+ also work?). And I think Open Firmware can only access HFS, HFS+, UFS and ext2 partitions. So the suggestion above to use an ext2- formatted /boot would likely work if Yaboot can't boot a kernel from an ext4 partition. If GRUB can be made to work and can live in the 1 MB AppleBoot hidden HFS partition, then that would be fine. I think people only like Yaboot because it works, even if it's buggy. Though I understand the problems with it not being supported upstream. > ... > >> If the only known bug is that it doesn’t support modern ext4 features, >> I have to say that’s something we know how to live with — a separate ext2 >> /boot partition fixes the problem. > But what's your problem with GRUB? I really don't see the point, sorry. > > ... > Which PPC hardware supports Yaboot but does not support GRUB? I'm > not aware of any. Well, at least the PowerBook G3 Lombard, so far. I haven't tested on the Pismo, PowerBook G4, or G5. Is the GRUB on the Debian 10/sid CD a good candidate for testing? > >>> partman-ext3 still contains a work-around on powerpc [1] which I would >>> like to get rid of. The workaround turns off 64-bit support in ext4 >>> and checksumming of metadata, both features are desirable to have >>> these days. >> If the reason for that work-around is solely to allow yaboot to work >> with an ext[34] root, I think my proposal solves the problem. As long as >> yaboot only has to deal with ext2, you can remove the work-around any >> time it’s convenient. > I don't want to work on Yaboot, sorry. > > Adrian >
