Re: State of GRUB on PowerPC

[Manoel Rebelo Abranches]

I'm working in a patch to make the install process better. I ĺl send it
soon, once some license issues are resolved. 

On Fri, 2008-12-19 at 01:00 +0100, Jordi Mallach wrote:
> Hello list,
> 
> Many months after my last try, I've given GRUB2 a go on my G4-based Apple
> laptop.
> 
> For this, I used Debian's 1st of December snapshot packaged to experimental.
> 
> Thanks to daChaac, the IRC hero once again ;) the executive summary changed
> from "frustrating failure" to "works with quite a few quirks".
> 
>  - grub-install generated an incorrect device.map. I've discussed this here
>    before: my OpenFirmware calls my hard disk "hd", not "hd0", but
>    grub-mkdevicemap will insist in adding the number. I corrected that
>    manually.
grub-mkconfig will not use that in the future but use ofpathname
instead.
>  - GRUB2 will load correctly and will display a menu, but will fail to load
>    Linux, giving a fun error "initrd: command not found". Some modules
>    needed by my grub.cfg are missing: _linux, linux, elf and search.
> 
> Loading linux.mod was challenging. `insmod linux` would result in a "file
> not found" error. I have two partitions that matter when booting:
> hd,2 is the Apple_bootstrap hfs partition, and holds all my grub stuff.
> hd,3 is my Debian partition, and holds /usr/lib/grub.
> 
> daChaac helped me finding the deps for linux.mod, and loading them
> sequentially made the module load:
> 
> grub> insmod elf
> grub> insmod (hd,3)/usr/lib/grub/powerpc-ieee1275/_linux.mod
> grub> insmod (hd,3)/usr/lib/grub/powerpc-ieee1275/linux.mod
> 
> This gets linux loaded, and things start to be smoother.
> 
> However, going back to the menu and trying to boot fails with "you need
> to load your kernel first". Damn.
> 
> Right, my menu entry includes a search command, which isn't loaded
> 
> grub> insmod search
> 
> But this still fails miseraby.
> 
> On the command-line, I copied the "search --fs-uuid --set" line from my
> grub.cfg, and
> 1) it printed "no such device" and errored out ($?=12,
> GRUB_ERR_UNKNOWN_DEVICE)
> 2) set my root variable to (second-boot).
> 
> Our guess is that this second-boot device has the same uuid as hd or hd,3
> and that makes search fail or whatever.
> 
> if I do "ls", I get hd + its partitions, ide0, ide1, first-boot and
> second-boot. `ls (first-boot)` gives:
> Device first-boot: partition table
> and `ls (first-boot)/` gives the "unknown filesystem" error.
> 
> Finally, if I get rid of the search command and change my root device to 
> simply
> /dev/hda3, linux is able to boot and I remain happy.
> 
> So, in short, a few problems:
> 
> - grub-mkdevicemap insists on calling my drive by another name (hd0 vs hd)
> - what's going on with linux.mod loading? I won't rule out a hfs fs bug,
>   and I'll format to find out, but it could be a hfs.mod bug too. Some
>   modules load, some others don't.
that's strange, i did my tests with a FAT partition so I can't tell at
the moment.
> - why wasn't search.mod loaded?
I think the search module isn't working in powerrPC, i have to look
better at it. 
> - what to do about second-boot confusing search?
> 
> Ah, also, my menu appears as white on red colours, but this is so minor at
> this point I was not even going to mention it. :)
> 
> Hopefully some OF expert can have a look at some of this.
> 
> Thanks,
> Jordi
> _______________________________________________
> Grub-devel mailing list
> address@hidden
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
-- 
Best Regards,

Manoel Abranches <address@hidden>
IBM Linux Technology Center Brazil