grub-ieee1275 is a powerful and effective bootloader for powerpc
machines.  It is significantly more flexible at runtime than yaboot, and
provides a user experience more roughly comparable with installs on i386
and amd64 machines.

Please have debian-installer on powerpc default to grub-ieee1275
instead of yaboot.

Differences in the setup:

yaboot expects a ~1MiB bootstrap partition in an apple-formatted disk
that is openfirmware-visible.  This partition isn't mounted on the
running host, but is managed/updated when the admin runs ybin.

grub-ieee1275 expects a larger bootstrap partition (~10MiB should be
fine) in an apple-formatted disk that is openfirmware-visible.  This
partition should have a plain HFS (not HFS+) filesystem on it, and
should be mounted by the host at /boot/grub.

Users of grub-ieee1275 probably therefore also want to have hfsprogs
installed on their system for /sbin/fsck.hfs so that routine filesystem
checks at boot time can proceed for the filesystem mounted at
/boot/grub.
-----

If you need help or advice on pursuing this transition, phcoder has
indicated that he would be happy to discuss it on the upstream mailing
list:

 Grub 2 Development List <grub-devel@gnu.org>

I'm also happy to test powerpc d-i images that use grub-ieee1275 if you
need testers.

Thanks for your work on d-i!

Regards,

phcoder gave me the following information on IRC about this transition:

Regards,

We can allow d-i grub installation on powerpc machines for wheezy, but
not make it default.

To transition fully to grub on powerpc machines we will have to change
partitioning recipes for CHRP IBM, CHRP Pegasos and NewWorld Mac
machines. This will have to wait for jessie.

Manual creation of the appropriate partition in d-i (/boot/grub) will
enable grub installation in wheezy d-i. Thus, we will be able to
experiment with d-i grub installation on powerpc machines.

I agree.

Do you have access to any IBM Power machines?


Milan

clone 664128 -1 -2 -3 -4 -5
reassign 664128 grub-installer
retitle 664128 Allow grub installation on powerpc machines if "/boot/grub" partition is present
tags 664128 pending
reassign -1 grub-installer
retitle -1 Provide instruction for Pegasos/Efika users to enable auto-boot in OF
reassign -2 partman-auto
retitle -2 Create OF boot partition and mount it at /boot/grub on CHRP IBM machines
reassign -3 partman-auto
retitle -3 Resize current boot partition and mount it at /boot/grub on NewWorld Mac machines
reassign -4 partman-auto
retitle -4 Create OF boot partition and mount it at /boot/grub on CHRP Pegasos/Efika
retitle -5 Install hfsprogs on powerpc machines by default
thanks


Creating non-exhaustive list of bugs/tasks to transition from yaboot to grub on powerpc machines.

Milan

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