RFH - Debian/S390

[Bastian Blank]

Hi folks

I wrote a TODO[1] and RfC for a possible etch release of the s390 port
about 2 months ago, and did not get any usefull reply.

As I'm the last person working on the core (and lack of time), there is
a large need for help. The main problems are currently hardware
configuration and debian-installer.

If someone wants to help but lacks developer access to such hardware, it
should be possible to get some linux guests on a maschine.

Bastian

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-s390/2005/11/msg00010.html

[Frans Pop]

The short answer, though, is that the parted problem seems to be
basically done, pending rolling it in officially, which is Otavio's

I have gotten the patches from Otavio and have just finished testing them
in D-I (building parted takes a while on Hercules :-)

Parted seems to work fine again. It recognized my existing partitions and
partitioning in the installer worked fine too.
There are some issues that need to be looked into for the installation (I
managed to finish it with some minor manual interventions, but the system
failed to boot...).

I'll give Otavio the green light to upload the new parted though.

I'm not sure exactly what's missing, Frans or waldi will know.

There are two things we should aim to do for the next D-I release:
- switch to 2.6 for installations
If I understand Bastian correctly this mainly requires automatic
configuration. I think he started that with his last s390-tools upload.
dasd configuration support is still missing in that IIUC.
- add full support for dasd in partman
So that at least partconf and partitioner can be dropped; not sure if
s390-dasd can be dropped. With the better integration in (lib)parted
this should probably not be too difficult.

Cheers,
FJP

[Adam Thornton]

Post by Frans Pop
I have gotten the patches from Otavio and have just finished
testing them
in D-I (building parted takes a while on Hercules :-)
Parted seems to work fine again. It recognized my existing
partitions and
partitioning in the installer worked fine too.
There are some issues that need to be looked into for the
installation (I
managed to finish it with some minor manual interventions, but the system
failed to boot...).
I'll give Otavio the green light to upload the new parted though.

Sounds good.

I don't know for sure if parted is going to work with preformatted
(or even unformatted) FBA disks; I mainly want this so that I can run
SWAPGEN in CMS before IPLling Linux and put a swap signature on a
newly-created VDISK. Then when parted runs it will see that there's
an already-initialized swap partition on an FBA (really virtual)
disk, and just allow swapping to it.

Leland added support for FBA, but I haven't tested it yet.

This is a very minor problem in comparison; opening a shell to attach
the swap disk manually is not a big deal. It would, however, be cool
if it really worked in the installer.

Adam

[Martin Michlmayr]

Post by Frans Pop
failed to boot...).
I'll give Otavio the green light to upload the new parted though.

I just saw the upload. Great work, Adam!

[Adam Thornton]

Post by Martin Michlmayr

Post by Frans Pop
failed to boot...).
I'll give Otavio the green light to upload the new parted though.

I just saw the upload. Great work, Adam!

Actually all the credit belongs to Leland Lucius, who did all the
work. I just put him into contact with Otavio and let things run
their course. I was merely the middleman.

Adam

[Frans Pop]

Post by Frans Pop
Parted seems to work fine again. It recognized my existing partitions
and partitioning in the installer worked fine too.
There are some issues that need to be looked into for the installation
(I managed to finish it with some minor manual interventions, but the
system failed to boot...).

Done another installation test yesterday and there are only two issues to
have s/390 installable again:
- minor issue with kernel selection in base-installer; new version with
fix already uploaded;
- sysvinit installs incorrect /etc/inittab for installed system resulting
in the problem on reboot; RC bug filed: #351871.

So, if we get the sysvinit issue fixed in time for the D-I Beta2 release,
it looks that S/390 will be installable again (using 2.4 kernel).

Thanks to all who contributed.

Cheers,
FJP

[Stepehn Frazier]

This looks good. Can you tell me what the problems are with using the
2.6 kernel?

Post by Frans Pop

Post by Frans Pop
Parted seems to work fine again. It recognized my existing partitions
and partitioning in the installer worked fine too.
There are some issues that need to be looked into for the installation
(I managed to finish it with some minor manual interventions, but the
system failed to boot...).

Done another installation test yesterday and there are only two issues to
- minor issue with kernel selection in base-installer; new version with
fix already uploaded;
- sysvinit installs incorrect /etc/inittab for installed system resulting
in the problem on reboot; RC bug filed: #351871.
So, if we get the sysvinit issue fixed in time for the D-I Beta2 release,
it looks that S/390 will be installable again (using 2.4 kernel).
Thanks to all who contributed.
Cheers,
FJP

--
Stephen Frazier
Information Technology Unit
Oklahoma Department of Corrections
3400 Martin Luther King
Oklahoma City, Ok, 73111-4298
Tel.: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Pager: [phone]
email: stevef%doc.state.ok.us

[Bastian Blank]

Post by Frans Pop
- switch to 2.6 for installations
If I understand Bastian correctly this mainly requires automatic
configuration. I think he started that with his last s390-tools upload.
dasd configuration support is still missing in that IIUC.

No, automatic configuration is not possible, that is why there needs to
be something which configures them on request. The package currently
sits in NEW.

Post by Frans Pop
- add full support for dasd in partman
So that at least partconf and partitioner can be dropped; not sure if
s390-dasd can be dropped. With the better integration in (lib)parted
this should probably not be too difficult.

s390-dasd is needed for
- disk format
- configuration.

Bastian