Re: debian-installer: please default to grub-ieee1275 on powerpc instead of yaboot

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Sep 21, 2017 at 10:37:43PM +0200, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> I have one POWER7 machine that has been provided to me by IBM for testing
> purposes and to host one of our buildds. I have performed a test installation
> of openSUSE Tumbleweed on it.
> 
> Here's the partitioning scheme that is being used:
> 
> (parted) p
> Model: Virtio Block Device (virtblk)
> Disk /dev/vda: 42.9GB
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
> Partition Table: msdos
> Disk Flags:
> 
> Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system     Flags
>  1      1049kB  2097kB  1049kB  primary                  boot, prep, type=41
>  2      2097kB  2163MB  2161MB  primary  linux-swap(v1)  type=82
>  3      2163MB  18.9GB  16.7GB  primary  btrfs           type=83
>  4      18.9GB  42.9GB  24.0GB  primary  xfs             type=83
> 
> (parted)
> 
> Interestingly, /boot is part of the btrfs filesystem:
> 
> linux-mfl2:~ # mount | grep boot
> /dev/vda3 on /boot/grub2/powerpc-ieee1275 type btrfs 
> (rw,relatime,space_cache,subvolid=261,subvol=/@/boot/grub2/powerpc-ieee1275)
> linux-mfl2:~ #

Well as long as grub can read that, then no problem.  So as long as
grub-install is including btrfs support in the grub image placed in the
prep boot partition, then /boot can be on btrfs.  That is almost certainly
the case.

> Ok, so I guess we can basically rule out GPT for the default label even
> on POWER systems. I would therefore then vote for using MS-DOS partition
> tables on POWER systems, i.e. what is already used now.

For powerpc/ppc64 I would agree.  For ppc64el GPT should be fine, and
I believe someone said that is in fact what they have done since it is
power8+ only.

> So, MS-DOS partition tables will not work at all on a Mac, correct?

Not as far as I know.  And given the apple partition table is better
anyhow, why would you want to?

-- 
Len Sorensen