Re: ppc64el Trixie Alpha 1 /boot may be ext2 not ext4

Pascal Hambourg <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.linux.debian.devel.cd,gmane.linux.debian.devel.boot
Organization Plouf !
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Hello,

On 12/01/2025 at 11:53, Holger Wansing wrote:
> Cyril Brulebois <[email protected]> wrote (Sun, 12 Jan 2025 11:21:08 +0100):
>> [email protected] <[email protected]> (2025-01-12):
>>> Hello,
>>> installing Trixie Alpha 1 on Tyan TN71-BP012 (POWER8)
>>> (/images/trixie_di_alpha1/ppc64el 2024/12/31)
>>>
>>> Installation goes well but installed system isn't bootable with Petitboot.
>>> Installation was made choosing automated partitioning for an entrier disk with LVM and luks.
>>> Doing that unencrypted /boot partition is ext4 and Petitboot can't see it.
>>> When partitioning if I edit /boot partition and set it to ext2 then after finishing installation,
>>> PetitBoot see it and I'm able to boot in the installed system.
>>
>> Sorry to hear about that. Looping in debian-boot@ who's responsible for
>> the installer components that implement those choices.

The move from ext2 to ext4 for /boot was in response to bug #985463
<https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=985463> after it was 
considered that bootloaders such as GRUB and U-Boot currently used with 
Debian supported ext4.

Inndeed it is unfortunate that a modern boot loader like Petitboot does 
not support ext4. It is even unexpected from a boot loader based on a 
Linux kernel, as mentioned in 
<https://open-power.github.io/petitboot/overview.html>.

> thanks for pointing me on this.
> I have just pushed a fix for this, reverting back to ext2:
> https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/partman-auto/-/commit/a87cccbe0198b4dea2cc46a39d5f5b99501aa095

Partitioning recipes for ppc64el create a separate /boot partition only 
when using LVM (and this was never changed). When using plain 
partitions, /boot is on the ext4 root partition so the above fix will 
have no effect.

According to 
<https://github.com/open-power/petitboot/blob/master/README.md> and 
<https://open-power.github.io/petitboot/platforms.html>, Petitboot is 
also available for arm64 platforms. Partitioning recipes for arm64 also 
use ext4 for /boot, so it would not work either.
lmpx.com only provides a reader for public news (NNTP) servers. It is not affiliated with the servers or forums shown here and is not responsible for the content of articles, which is written by their respective authors.