October 7, 2024 at 9:39 AM, "Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli" <gnu...@cyberdimension.org mailto:gnu...@cyberdimension.org?to=%22Denis%20'GNUtoo'%20Carikli%22%20%3CGNUtoo%40cyberdimension.org%3E > wrote:
> > Hi, > > The HURD wiki now mentions that the "X200, T400, or T500 Thinkpads" > can now run HURD[1]. > > My interest in HURD at the moment is mainly to test HURD to document > which GNU Boot configurations can or cannot boot HURD and maybe have > some automatic testing done with HURD as well or if it's too much work, > to document the current status (cannot test hurd ourselves, in need for > volunteers to do that, need to wait for <foo> for testing, etc). > > Since we don't want to force GNU Boot contributors to run nonfree > distros, and that we can't integrate code to automatically tests with > nonfree distros either, our only option is either to rely on voulonteers > to run tests or to do the tests ourselves with FSDG distros. > > In practice we already have automatic testing with Trisquel and LVM for > instance, and Guix and Trisquel are also manually tested quite often > these days. > > So this brings my question: Is there an easy way to somehow reproduce > an installation of GRUB with FSDG distributions or does that still > require Debian? > > I'm looking for something that can potentially be automatized or > reproduced by following some instructions somehow, and if that doesn't > exist, I'm looking for a way to do that without too much work, or to > document the current status. Well, do not use the "latest" or "stable" debian hurd iso 32 images. That is any 32 bit image with the date 2023-06-08. That 32 bit net-install image currently fail to boot the Hurd on the T400. So these images do NOT boot: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/latest/hurd-i386/current/iso-cd/ https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/stable/hurd-i386/iso-cd/ crossinstall should work for now: https://darnassus.sceen.net/~hurd-web/hurd/running/debian/CrossInstall/ > The two FSDG distributions that seem to have support for HURD are Guix > and Trisquel. > > For Guix it's well tested in VMs within the childhurd compilation > offload Guix service, but when running in some other configurations it > has several issues: > (1) The GRUB configuration somehow hardcodes 'hda1' as the HURD > partition. On real hardware it can be worked around by identifying > which partition is the right one and changing it accordingly > (usually it's sda1 or sda2 depending on if there is a cdrom/dvd > drive for instance). With standalone VMs this is easier to deal with > than as one can just make the disk image become ATA and get rid of > the issue for good. > (2) Guix with GRUB can only boot once on standalone VMs or on real > hardware. It's a known bug and there are workarounds in the > hurd-team branch in Guix. With standalone VMs the workaround is to > copy the VM file before each boot but that is way more time > consuming to do with real hardware. > > The combination of both issues makes it harder to test, especially if we > add other things in the mix like changing the boot software and/or > its build configuration and/or broken hardware. > > There is also Trisquel that has a crosshurd package but I've not tested > it yet, but it also seems to use debian's sources.list. > > So I was wondering if people had workaround for the issues above to > make it relatively easy to test, or if there are other paths that can > results in a HURD image that can be tested somehow. > > References: > ----------- > [1]https://darnassus.sceen.net/~hurd-web/faq/drivers/ > > Denis. >
