Package: installation-reports
Severity: normal
Boot method: USB
Image version: debian-live-11.0.0-amd64-xfce.iso release candidate, 2021-08-14
Date: 2021-08-14 approx 18:30 UTC
Machine: Lenovo Thinkpad X201, booted using BIOS
Partitions:
(transcribed by hand, might not be 100% accurate - I'll get logs later
but I wanted to report this while I still remember what I did)
~ # chroot /target sfdisk --dump /dev/sdb
label: dos
label-id: 0xbbfb3881
device: /dev/sdb
unit: sectors
sector-size: 512
/dev/sdb1 : start= 2048, size= 312578048, type=fd
~ # chroot /target lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 1 7.3G 0 disk
|-sda1 8:1 1 2.3G 0 part /media/cdrom
`-sda2 8:2 1 2.6M 0 part
sdb 8:16 0 149.1G 0 disk
`-sdb1 8:17 0 149G 0 part
`-md0 9:0 0 148.9G 0 raid1 /
~ # chroot /target mount
/dev/md0 on / type jfs (rw,relatime)
/dev/sda1 on /media/cdrom (etc.)
devtmpfs on /dev type devtmpfs (etc.)
proc on /proc (etc.)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (etc.)
sysfs on /sys (etc.)
Base System Installation Checklist:
[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it
Initial boot: [O]
Detect network card: [ ]
Configure network: [ ]
Detect media: [O]
Load installer modules: [O]
Clock/timezone setup: [O]
User/password setup: [O]
Detect hard drives: [O]
Partition hard drives: [O]
Install base system: [O]
Install tasks: [O]
Install boot loader: [E]
Overall install: [E]
While working through the debian-cd testing checklist I tried to install
from the copy of d-i on the XFCE live image, onto a (degraded) RAID1 array
with a single JFS partition that is the root filesystem. Transcribed by
hand, formatting might not be 100% faithful but numbers should be correct:
~ # chroot /target lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 1 7.3G 0 disk
|-sda1 8:1 1 2.3G 0 part /media/cdrom
`-sda2 8:2 1 2.6M 0 part
sdb 8:16 0 149.1G 0 disk
`-sdb1 8:17 0 149G 0 part
`-md0 9:0 0 148.9G 0 raid1 / <-- a JFS filesystem
Note that I don't use JFS myself and I don't know whether this is expected
to be something that grub is able to cope with (#debian-cd regulars tell me
that they normally use a separate ext2 /boot partition outside the RAID array
when testing this use-case).
When trying to install the bootloader, I was prompted with this device list:
/dev/sda (the USB stick I am installing from)
/dev/sdb (the hard disk)
and I chose /dev/sdb. The result is:
Install the GRUB boot loader
-----------------------------
Unable to install GRUB in /dev/md
Executing 'grub-install /dev/md' failed.
This is a fatal error.
I tried to work around this with:
~ # chroot /target grub-install /dev/md0
but this also failed with:
grub-install: warning: Couldn't find physical volume `(null)'. Some modules
may be missing from core image..
grub-install: warning: Couldn't find physical volume `(null)'. Some modules
may be missing from core image..
grub-install: warning: File system `jfs' doesn't support embedding.
grub-install: warning: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be
installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are
UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged..
grub-install: error: will not proceed with blocklists.
I'll send logs when I've recovered them but I can't do that right now.
Again, I don't know whether this *should* work - I'm only testing it because
it was my interpretation of what was on the checklist.
smcv
