Thank you for the detailed explanation Adrian, I will definitely find someway in contributing to this project!
On Sun, May 17, 2020 at 3:32 AM John Paul Adrian Glaubitz < glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de> wrote: > Hi Hao! > > On 5/17/20 6:29 AM, H wrote: > > In my understanding these rollouts are built from certain config sets. > Just > > wondering, does that mean the fix you pushed to 2020-04-19 is not > > permanent? Or is there anything else that possibly changed that caused a > > regression? > Basically yes, but let me explain. > > In order to install GRUB during installation, debian-instaleller uses the > package "grub-installer" which is a so-called udeb (a micro-deb) that is > installable in the debian-installer environment only. > > grub-installer contains a script with platform-specific code [1] to install > GRUB on different targets. One of these targets are > powerpc/powermac_newworld and > ppc64/powermac_newworld, i.e. 32-bit and 64-bit PowerPC machines with > NewWorld > ROMs. > > To install GRUB on these systems, one needs to make sure the partitioning > is > correct and the first partition is formatted with HFS+, then the proper > OpenFirmware path is matched to a Linux device path (/dev/sdX). This > involves > the packages partman-auto, partman-newworld, powerpc-utils and hfsprogs. > > The necessary changes in powerpc-utils package are permanent and I have > sent > my patches upstream [3]. The changes for partman-auto, partman-newworld > and grub-installer are not permanent (but only local builds, hence the > "+mac" version number) because the changes are a bit hacky, they do > work however but they get overridden once new versions of the partman-auto > and grub-installer packages are uploaded by other members of the > debian-installer > team (we could blacklist updates to these packages on powerpc and ppc64 > though but since they affect image builds only and no installed systems, > it's not that critical) - partman-newworld is not affected but I would > like to get rid of that package. > > Anyway, in order to make these changes permanent, a proper solution > requires > first that the hfsprogs package gets updated and a hfsprogs-udeb package > is added which is what I am planning to do next. However, since hfsprogs > has a few problems on its own, this will take some more elbow grease until > I have the package in the shape needed (also because of Apple's APSL > license > which some folk in Debian consider non-DFSG-compliant - something I > disagree > with). > > Once we have a working hfsprogs-udeb, the necessary changes to > grub-installer > and partman-auto will be much smaller and partman-newworld can hopefully > be dropped as partman-auto just needs to specify a partition layout with > the necessary HFS+ partition. > > In any case, to make things happen faster, I'm always looking for > contributors. > > PS: New images with the temporary changes back in are coming shortly. > > PPS: As for the missing firmware, this is also work-in-progress but this > requires changes to the Debian Ports FTP server to include contrib > and non-free which is something that needs to be done by Aurelien > Jarno. > > Thanks, > Adrian > > > [1] > https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/grub-installer/-/blob/master/grub-installer > > [2] > https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/grub-installer/-/merge_requests/2 > > [3] > https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/powerpc-utils-devel/bhXwIRgL20k > > -- > .''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz > : :' : Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org > `. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de > `- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913 >
