Package: debian-installer Version: 20200314 Severity: grave User: debian-sp...@lists.debian.org Usertags: sparc64 X-Debbugs-Cc: debian-sp...@lists.debian.org
Currently, the debian installer uses the force(-f) switch on mkfs to make sure that mkfs doesn't bail creating the first partition on the disk with an error stating it found a partition label where the partition start is. This behavior works fine for ext2, which starts with 2 empty blocks, but for other filesystems like XFS the partition label is immediately trashed(can be observed by parted reporting the label type with "loop"). This location was apparently necessary for SILO, and it always functioned as the first partition created by guided partitioning was always ext-default and boot first, but now that debian-sparc64 uses GRUB2 this _probably_ isn't necessary. In manual partitioning the behavior is trivially replicable by creating a first partition with an XFS filesystem, where upon choosing "beginning" for the location of the new filesystem the start is placed at 0. When formatting happens after confirming this setup, the disk label is promptly trashed and the system is rendered unbootable. src: https://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/sundisklabels.html
