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

Aurelien Jarno <[email protected]> Mon, 26 Jun 2017 09:02:58 +0200
Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.ports.mips
Message-ID	<[email protected]>
On 2017-06-24 19:07, Aurelien Jarno wrote:
> On 2017-06-24 02:12, Cyril Brulebois wrote:
> > 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?
> 
> The current version of subarch-mips-linux.c tries to detect if the CPU
> is 32 or 64-bit using the CPU type. It's therefore not prepared for the
> "GENERIC QEMU" type returned in /proc/cpuinfo. The code should probably
> be modified to use the "isa" field as a fallback if the "cpu model"
> field can't be used to determine the flavour.

I have implemented that change in libdebian-installer 0.111. This is
already available in the daily installer images [1]. Once it reaches
testing, we can consider backporting it to stretch.

Aurelien

[1] https://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/mips64el/daily/

-- 
Aurelien Jarno                          GPG: 4096R/1DDD8C9B
[email protected]                 http://www.aurel32.net
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