Dennis,
Yes, that was the issue.
Even after amending it with the suggested fix, subsequent GRUB updates
continued to break the boot process.
Bullseye's cycle can't come soon enough...
Noah
On 07/02/2019 10:32 AM, Frank Scheiner wrote:
> Hi Riccardo,
>
> sorry for being so late, but I was occupied by other things the last
> weeks.
>
> On 6/26/19 20:22, Riccardo Mottola wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
>>> On 6/25/19 11:50 PM, Riccardo Mottola wrote:
>>>> in the meanwhile I did not stand still, but I tried:
>>>>
>>>> 1) boot with rescue CD as Frank suggested
>>>> 2) mount root
>>> Did you bind-mount /dev, /proc and /sys as well?
>>
>> I did not - I though rescue would do that for me.
>
> I think it actually does when you start a shell in the root FS from the
> installer menu in rescue mode.
>
>>
>>>
>>>> 3) get and install yaboot
>>>> 3) nvsetenv boot-device "$( ofpath /dev/<HFS_BOOTSTRAP_PARTITION>
>>>> ),\grub"
>>> Does ofpath /dev/sda1 show a correct path?
>>
>> it does print a reasonable OpenFirmware path:
>
> Then at least `/sys` was mounted, because `ofpath` operates on sysfs
> AFAIK.
>
>>
>> should actually sda1 (the minimal partition at the beginning) or sda2
>> (the 20MB partition) be used?
>
> sda2 should be used, the first partition is sort of a disk header
> containing partitioning information IIRC.
>
>>
>> my question is if everything is partitioned and installed correctly.
>> If I boot holding down "option", shouldn't all bootable disks be shown?
>> boot-device is only the setting with tells OF where to automatically
>> boot from, but if a good disk is found, it should be found: can somebody
>> try on his GRUB mac?
>> On my iBook which still has yaboot, I see a Hard Disk Icon with a small
>> penguin. On the PowerBook I don't see it.
>>
>> parted shows me 4 partitions
>>
>> 1) 32KB "no file system", named Apple, no flags
>> 2) 20MB "no file system", untitled, flagged as boot
>> 3) 96GB ext4, untitled, no flags
>> 4) 4GB linux-swap, swap, swap
>>
>> is that fine?
>
> Partitioning is fine, but the second partition has no file system on it
> and it needs to be be formatted as HFS. I think that's the reason the
> containing disk is not shown in the "option" menu.
>
> There's no UDEB for hfsprogs which would allow handling HFS from the
> installer environment so we need to resort to using the tools from the
> hfsprogs DEB package from inside the target root FS during installation.
> But during your installation the hfsprogs package couldn't be located,
> making `mk-hfs-bootstrap` unable to perform its task which also makes
> `d-i/grub-installer` exiting before finishing the GRUB installation.
>
>>
>> I wonder if inside the chrooted environment, if I configure network and
>> sources, I can "reinstall" something and fix the situation so at least
>> OF recognizes this as a bootable disk?
>
> To - hopefully - fix your issue you'll need at least hfsprogs in
> addition to `ofpath` (seems to be already there according to what was
> written above).
>
> Again boot into rescue mode and start a shell in the root FS.
>
> After hfsprogs was installed you can use `mkfs.hfs`. Use it as follows
> (taken and adapted from my `mk-hfs-bootstrap.sh` on [1] - you can't use
> it directly from inside the root FS, as it is meant to be used from the
> installer environment):
>
> ```
> mkfs.hfs -h /dev/sda2
> ```
>
> ...to format the partition. Then create the necessary mount point and
> mount the FS:
>
> ```
> mkdir -p "/boot/grub" && mount -t hfs /dev/sda2 "/boot/grub"
> ```
>
> Also add the partition/FS to `/etc/fstab` using its UUID:
>
> ```
> _offs_part_uuid="$( blkid -o value -s UUID /dev/sda2 )"
>
> echo '# /boot/grub was on /dev/sda2 during
> installation\nUUID=${_offs_part_uuid} /boot/grub hfs defaults 0 2' >>
> /etc/fstab
> ```
>
> [1]:
> https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/grub-installer/blob/7c9b709879d1c09ca83330be95c4f09815f4353f/mk-hfs-bootstrap.sh
>
>
>
> Before continuing disguise `ofpath` as `ofpathname`:
>
> ```
> mv /usr/sbin/ofpathname /usr/sbin/ofpathname-ibm && ln -s
> /usr/sbin/ofpath /usr/sbin/ofpathname
> ```
>
> ...as `grub-install` uses `ofpathname` internally.
>
> Now that everything is prepared you can use `grub-install` to install
> GRUB onto the HFS bootstrap partition (taken and adapted from [2]):
>
> ```
> grub-install --macppc-directory=/boot/grub
> ```
>
> [2]:
> https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/grub-installer/blob/7c9b709879d1c09ca83330be95c4f09815f4353f/grub-installer#L933
>
>
>
> Keeping the `ofpath` as `ofpathname` symlink could help to avoid
> problems with wrong OF paths during future package upgrades of the GRUB
> packages.
>
> @Noah:
> Wasn't this also a problem you had - I mean an unbootable system after
> the GRUB packages were upgraded? So that could be a workaround for that
> problem.
>
>>
>>>
>>>> PS: I noticed that the CD still has the wrong mirrors source list, as
>>>> a long time ago. What should be the correct one to use currently and
>>>> can itbe fixed too?
>>> This is something I cannot influence as this is blocked here [1].
>>
>> do we have a page which shows the current advised settings?
>
> Not sure, but you should use "ftp.ports.debian.org" and "/debian-ports/"
> as on [3] during the installation.
>
> [3]: https://www.ports.debian.org/archive
>
> Hope that helps,
> Frank
