Re: Bug#865425: debian-installer-9-netboot-mips64el: mips64el Malta netboot installer finds no installable kernel

Cyril Brulebois <[email protected]> Sat, 24 Jun 2017 02:12:03 +0200

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.ports.mips
Organization	Debian
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

Control: reassign -1 libdebian-installer 0.110
Control: affects -1 debian-installer-9-netboot-mips64el

Bruno Bierbaumer <[email protected]> (2017-06-21):²
> Package: debian-installer-9-netboot-mips64el
> Severity: normal
> Tags: d-i
> 
> Dear Maintainer,
> 
> I wanted to install Debian Stretch mips64el in QEMU.
> It seems that the netboot installer can't find any installable kernel for this architecture.
> There is definitely linux-images for 5kc-malta in the repo and the same install procedure worked for both mips and mipsel.
> 
> Steps to reproduce:
> 
> qemu-system-mips64el -M malta -m 256 -cpu MIPS64R2-generic  \
> -drive file=hda.qcow2,if=virtio,format=qcow2,index=0 \
> -kernel vmlinux-4.9.0-3-5kc-malta \
> -initrd initrd.gz \
> -net user,hostfwd=tcp::22222-:22 \
> -net nic \
> -nographic \
> -append "nokaslr"
> 
> The installer will show the error: No installable kernel was found in the defined APT sources

Some info about this:
~ # archdetect 
mips64el/unknown

and “unknown” is why base-installer isn't able to pick the right kernel.

Looking at the hwmap structure in src/system/subarch-mips-linux.c (from
the libdebian-installer package), where architecture detection happens,
I initially thought we were missing some MIPS64 pattern there, but that
doesn't seem the case, as /proc/cpuinfo reports this:
| system type             : MIPS Malta
…
| cpu model               : MIPS GENERIC QEMU V0.0  FPU V0.0

(Full contents below for reference.)

and those are the ones which are searched through the hwmap…

I'm not sure how to fix libdebian-installer here, adding debian-mips@
and qemu maintainers in copy.

It might make sense to update the bug report title as well at some
point, since this is likely an issue on QEMU only?


KiBi.

----

~ # cat /proc/cpuinfo 
system type             : MIPS Malta
machine                 : mti,malta
processor               : 0
cpu model               : MIPS GENERIC QEMU V0.0  FPU V0.0
BogoMIPS                : 1271.80
wait instruction        : yes
microsecond timers      : yes
tlb_entries             : 64
extra interrupt vector  : yes
hardware watchpoint     : yes, count: 1, address/irw mask: [0x0ff8]
isa                     : mips1 mips2 mips3 mips4 mips5 mips32r1
mips32r2 mips64r1 mips64r2
ASEs implemented        : mips3d
shadow register sets    : 1
kscratch registers      : 0
package                 : 0
core                    : 0
VCED exceptions         : not available
VCEI exceptions         : not available

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