Re: Updated installation images for Debian Ports (2025-03-16)

Hi Mathias,

On Tue, 2025-03-25 at 22:45 +0100, Mathias Parnaudeau wrote:
> I tested the installation on this machine with image 2024-12-24 and 
> after the partitioning, in another console, mount shows the hfs 
> partition, what is not the case with image 2025-03-16.

You're right. I forgot to manually inject the udebs for HFS support this
time. I unfortunately have to do that every time since Debian thinks that
the APSL license is non-free meaning that hfsprogs had to be moved to
the non-free section which is not supported in Debian Ports.

I have reached out to Apple's legal department trying to convince them to
switch the license of their HFS code from ASPL to a license that is DFSG-
compatible but I never succeeded. I also asked for help on this list.

I know that fixing HFS support in debian-installer once and for all seems
like a trivial problem but by all means, it's not trivial at all.

However, I will remember injecting the udebs manually next time I build
images.

> To continue testing 32-bit machines, I tried to install the latest image 
> on PowerBook G4 and after have chosen the default install, it is stuck at:
> 
> Quiescing Open Firmware ...
> Booting Linux via __start() @ 0x20c00000
> 
> I obtain exactly the same result with QEMU that I tried to install with 
> the followind command line (not sure of it, but it is hard to find a 
> procedure for recent Debian versions, for example):
> 
> /usr/bin/qemu-system-ppc -L pc-bios -boot d -M mac99,via=pmu -m 1024 
> -hda debian-12.qcow2 -cdrom 
> /home/mathias/Téléchargements/20250316-debian-12.0.0-powerpc-NETINST-1.iso
> 
> 
> Still on this PowerBook G4, the image 2024-12-24 stops at the same place.

Yesterday I had the idea to modify the problematic patch [1] so that it applies
on ppc64el only but not on powerpc and ppc64. This should at least fix the
console problem.

Adrian

> [1] https://salsa.debian.org/kernel-team/linux/-/blob/debian/latest/debian/patches/bugfix/powerpc/fbdev-offb-Update-expected-device-name.patch?ref_type=heads

-- 
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