Bug#1068898: Reinstate OpenRD netboot images for bookworm

[Martin Michlmayr]

Package: debian-installer
Version: 20230607+deb12u5

I'm sorry to be that guy who shows up every few years to waste
everyone's time... but... I was updating my Kirkwood pages for
bookworm and noticed that the OpenRD images are gone.

Now you may remember that we had the same situation for bullseye
(#934072) and Cyril kindly restored the netboot images:
https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/debian-installer/-/commit/3ef30be60ab128f53a0cd16e6c1e91a3123988b4

I guess this change never got committed to master/main because
bullseye was going to be the last release for armel.

But armel is still in bookworm and Rick confirmed he's running
bookworm on his OpenRD, so I see no reason why d-i wouldn't work if
we apply the same patch to the bookworm d-i.

Honestly, I'm not sure if it's worth it as Rick is probably the one
Debian on OpenRD left, but since bookworm will probably be the last
release of armel (or not?) it would be nice if the installer was
working on OpenRD.

Cyril or Vagrant, can you easily apply the patch above and generate a
test image for Rick?

Sorry for creating work (again) for such a minor platform...

[Cyril Brulebois]

Hi Martin,

(Replying as much as braindumping to avoid rediscovering this next time
around.)

Post by Martin Michlmayr
I'm sorry to be that guy who shows up every few years to waste
everyone's time... but... I was updating my Kirkwood pages for
bookworm and noticed that the OpenRD images are gone.
Now you may remember that we had the same situation for bullseye
https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/debian-installer/-/commit/3ef30be60ab128f53a0cd16e6c1e91a3123988b4
I guess this change never got committed to master/main because
bullseye was going to be the last release for armel.

Well, Rick explicitly said he was happy with bullseye or bookworm, so
one of them got implemented


Post by Martin Michlmayr
But armel is still in bookworm and Rick confirmed he's running
bookworm on his OpenRD, so I see no reason why d-i wouldn't work if
we apply the same patch to the bookworm d-i.
Honestly, I'm not sure if it's worth it as Rick is probably the one
Debian on OpenRD left, but since bookworm will probably be the last
release of armel (or not?) it would be nice if the installer was
working on OpenRD.
Cyril or Vagrant, can you easily apply the patch above and generate a
test image for Rick?

I don't mind doing that again, but what's the game plan here? If systems
are already installed and working fine, then d-i is irrelevant. For any
new systems people might want to deploy, installing bullseye then
upgrading to bookworm already works?

We don't have anything to support for armel at the moment (as far as
master and testing/unstable are concerned), hence the current “let it
die altogether” plan from a d-i perspective:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2024/03/msg00016.html

I'm not sure we should be encouraging new installations of 32-bit
hardware at this stage (look at what's happening for i386
). I don't
remember seeing a decision regarding armel's being a release arch for
trixie, but kernel support is gone already (same thread):
https://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2024/01/msg00008.html

So OpenRD has no future in trixie as far as I understand. At least that
would mean not having to do that again again, if we were to enable
OpenRD images again for bookworm.


Cheers,

[Martin Michlmayr]

Post by Cyril Brulebois
I don't mind doing that again, but what's the game plan here? If systems
are already installed and working fine, then d-i is irrelevant.

Well, maybe someone wants to install Debian, either because they find
an old OpenRD somewhere or because Rick's hard drive dies or
something.

Post by Cyril Brulebois
For any new systems people might want to deploy, installing bullseye
then upgrading to bookworm already works?

Of course, but bullseye will be moved to archive.d.o at some point (I
know you can install from there, but then you have to specify the
mirror).

Anyway, I have no game play. Like I said, it's probably all a waste
of time, but Debian bookworm works on OpenRD and d-i should work if we
add the image, we already have a patch... so it seems like we should
just do it.

My game play is that I'm a perfectionist but I am aware there are
pretty much no users of Debian on OpenRD (I only know of Rick!).

Post by Cyril Brulebois
So OpenRD has no future in trixie as far as I understand. At least that
would mean not having to do that again again, if we were to enable
OpenRD images again for bookworm.

Yes, imho let's add the image for bookworm and let this be the end of
it. ;)

But if you just want to close this feature request, I doubt many
people will care.

[Martin Michlmayr]

Post by Martin Michlmayr
Yes, imho let's add the image for bookworm and let this be the end of
it. ;)

I read about the upcoming 12.6. Kibi, what do you think about adding
back the OpenRT images one last time?

[Cyril Brulebois]

Post by Martin Michlmayr

Post by Martin Michlmayr
Yes, imho let's add the image for bookworm and let this be the end
of it. ;)

I read about the upcoming 12.6. Kibi, what do you think about adding
back the OpenRT images one last time?

If I can get a confirmation a tentative build is working properly, that
could be envisioned.


Cheers,

[Cyril Brulebois]

Post by Cyril Brulebois
If I can get a confirmation a tentative build is working properly, that
could be envisioned.

If there are no volunteers though, I won't even try.


Cheers,

[Martin Michlmayr]

Post by Cyril Brulebois

Post by Cyril Brulebois
If I can get a confirmation a tentative build is working properly, that
could be envisioned.

If there are no volunteers though, I won't even try.

I asked Vagrant for help a few days ago but haven't heard back. I
don't have an armel build environment.

I'll ping him again.

[Cyril Brulebois]

Post by Martin Michlmayr
I asked Vagrant for help a few days ago but haven't heard back. I
don't have an armel build environment.
I'll ping him again.

If memory serves, last time I did build stuff on a porter box to make
sure the generated images could be verified as working. I can do the
former once again, but for the latter I need someone with hardware.

(amdahl can be used for that.)

We're nowhere Bookworm's EOL so if that can't be checked in time for
next week's point release, that can wait until the next one. For the
record, d-i is usually uploaded the day following the p-u freeze (i.e.
Monday). And we have a double point release, so messing with the usual
upload timings is definitely not something I would willingly consider.


Cheers,

[Martin Michlmayr]

Post by Cyril Brulebois
If memory serves, last time I did build stuff on a porter box to make
sure the generated images could be verified as working. I can do the
former once again, but for the latter I need someone with hardware.

Yes, Rick can test if there's an image. If you have time, that'd be
great!

(Adding Rick and Vagrant to CC.)

[Cyril Brulebois]

Hi,

No sweat -- just point me at the image and let me know anything
special I should be looking out for.

Pushed pu/openrd, the main part is:
https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/debian-installer/-/commit/8e1ba33e175615082b4dfeb6b554ca1ec7669f7d

Built on amdahl, resulting images tarball published similarly to what
we did last time for bullseye:
https://people.debian.org/~kibi/openrd4bookworm/

If positive test results are obtained before the end of the week, that
can be considered for inclusion into 12.6. Thanks already!


Cheers,

[Cyril Brulebois]

Post by Cyril Brulebois

No sweat -- just point me at the image and let me know anything
special I should be looking out for.

https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/debian-installer/-/commit/8e1ba33e175615082b4dfeb6b554ca1ec7669f7d
Built on amdahl, resulting images tarball published similarly to what
https://people.debian.org/~kibi/openrd4bookworm/
If positive test results are obtained before the end of the week, that
can be considered for inclusion into 12.6. Thanks already!

Timeout; next target is 12.7.


Cheers,

[Martin Michlmayr]

No sweat -- just point me at the image and let me know anything
special I should be looking out for.

1) Download https://people.debian.org/~kibi/openrd4bookworm/debian-installer-images_20230607+deb12u6_armel.tar.gz

2) Unpack the tar file and get the image from installer-armel/current/images/kirkwood/netboot/marvell/openrd-<base,client,ultimate> (whatever machine you have)

3) Try an installation using this image. You can use the instructions
from https://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/openrd/install/
(But obviously use the installer image from above)

4) Report if the installation is successful or if there are problems.

Martin

[Rick Thomas]

Sorry for the long delay in getting to this!

I have successfully installed Debian 12.6 on my OpenRD "client" machine using Martin's installer.

Please make it generally available as per this bug report!

Enjoy!
Rick

[Martin Michlmayr]

Post by Rick Thomas
I have successfully installed Debian 12.6 on my OpenRD "client" machine using Martin's installer.

^^^^^^
Cyril Brulebois prepared the image, not me.

But in any case, thanks for testing it and confirming that it works.

I hope this can go into 12.7.

[Cyril Brulebois]

Post by Rick Thomas
Sorry for the long delay in getting to this!
I have successfully installed Debian 12.6 on my OpenRD "client"
machine using Martin's installer.

Great news, thanks.

I suppose this means the image is sufficiently self-contained that the
installer didn't need to pull e.g. kernel-related udebs from the
network? That image was built a while back, and I'd have imagined you
might run into troubles if you didn't test it on the spot (as is the
case for netboot builds for everyone, not just on arm devices).


Cheers,

[Martin Michlmayr]

Post by Cyril Brulebois

Post by Rick Thomas
I have successfully installed Debian 12.6 on my OpenRD "client"
machine using Martin's installer.

Great news, thanks.

Can you apply the patch to the bookworm branch? I'll update my web
site when 12.7 comes out.

I promise no more OpenRD related tasks after bookworm. ;-)

[Martin Michlmayr]

Post by Martin Michlmayr

Post by Cyril Brulebois

Post by Rick Thomas
I have successfully installed Debian 12.6 on my OpenRD "client"
machine using Martin's installer.

Great news, thanks.

Can you apply the patch to the bookworm branch? I'll update my web
site when 12.7 comes out.

Anything else needed to apply this patch?

It seems it didn't make 12.7.

[Cyril Brulebois]

Post by Martin Michlmayr
Anything else needed to apply this patch?
It seems it didn't make 12.7.

That's on me, the back and forth at the time took some time and that
wasn't merged as that could have been if things went more hop-pop-pop.

Then last weekend I didn't remember the branch (and for some reasons
didn't see it in gitk with all the other things in there). Some more
distraction popped up as well, on the SB(AT) front — even if I only
noticed after the git-side of the point release preparations so that
is really no excuse.

Just merged the pu/openrd branch into the bookworm one so it cannot
be missed next time.

Apologies for the missed opportunity.


Cheers,

[Martin Michlmayr]

Post by Cyril Brulebois
Just merged the pu/openrd branch into the bookworm one so it cannot
be missed next time.

Thank you!

Post by Cyril Brulebois
Apologies for the missed opportunity.

No problem. Thanks for your help.

[Martin Michlmayr]

I've updated the links in my OpenRD install guide to point to Debian
12 now that the images have been restored:
https://www.cyrius.com/debian/kirkwood/openrd/install/

Thanks again Kibi and Rick. I think Rick is the only user left but
it's nice to have this just in case...

[Debian Bug Tracking System]

Your message dated Mon, 04 Nov 2024 08:47:07 +0000
with message-id <E1t7sjr-001DhC-***@fasolo.debian.org>
and subject line Bug#1068898: fixed in debian-installer 20230607+deb12u8
has caused the Debian Bug report #1068898,
regarding Reinstate OpenRD netboot images for bookworm
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

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