Re: Regression in 10.x installer

[RVP <rvp%SDF.ORG@localhost>]

On Mon, 14 Aug 2023, salquest%duck.com@localhost wrote:

> It looks like for UEFI installation, it executes “gpt -rq header <disk>” 
> command. I did not find logs of any other command both when I selected the 
> whole disk, and when I selected a particular wedge.
>
> So, when I select the whole disk, it was:
> “gpt -rq header wd0”

This looks correct.

> And when I selected dk1 wedge, it was:
> “gpt -rq header dk1"

This looks iffy. There's no "header" on a wedge--unless it's just trying to
get the wedge size.

> I think this bug no longer exists in the sysinst where selecting preselected 
> wedge fails.

Not sure. The last time I tried, you couldn't select a wedge as the installation
target. It would fail horribly.

> However, there is another bug. With NetBSD 10.x installer, when 
> we select the whole disk, say wd0, it removes all wedges except the EFI 
> system partition from the output of “dkctl wd0 listwedges”. I see these 
> errors logs scroll on the screen - removing dk2, etc.
> And from that point onwards, the installer is practically unusable, because 
> “dkctl wd0 listwedges” shows only EFI partition, and the installer offers 
> only the system EFI partition as an option to install NetBSD.

Yes, I recall that it did just that when I installed 10.0-BETA some months
back, but nonetheless, my procedure worked fine. Maybe because I didn't exit
sysinst to create the GPT partition. I'd already created the new NetBSD
partition when I began. Try my procedure out again like that: once in sysinst
don't exit into the shell--to check on the log-data, for instance :).

> Again, this bug no longer exists where we needed to manually configure these 
> flags. But, there is other issue now. It either does not select any 
> partition, or selects the NetBSD partition with only ‘install’ flag with 
> mount-point “/". It also selects the EFI system partition as EFI. However, 
> when I configure the NetBSD partition with “newfs” and “boot”, and “okay” the 
> partition changes, it shows me the same install menu again asking me to 
> choose the disk to install NetBSD on. Even when I accept the default 
> partition setting, the behavior is the same.

I needed to fiddle with this because I already had 2 NetBSD FFS partitions
on the HDD and sysinst marked both of 'em with a mount-point of "/" and the
"I" flag was set on the 1st NetBSD FFS partition it had found.

> Utility menu’s sysinst logs offers a hint though. I think it does "gpt -rq 
> header dk1” when we select a preselected wedge dk1. The output of this 
> command is “GPT header not found”, which makes sense because it’s a wedge and 
> not a disk. So, I think the installer treats this as an error, and gives up 
> trying to install NetBSD on that wedge.

Yes, this doesn't look kosher as I said above.

> Do we need to create a separate EFI partition for NetBSD? Can we get away by 
> using the EFI system partition? If sysinst is copying BOOTx64.EFI to the EFI 
> system partition, it is correctly recognizing the partition, right?

Not needed. You can just use a different directory on the System EFI partition.
But, I like to create an EFI partition for each of the different OSes that
are on the disk.

-RVP