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Bug#985956: #985956 - missing kernel module in installer

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Hi Wookey,

Thanks a lot for looking into this!

On 2021.05.14 03:08, Wookey wrote:

> I've done this, and if you want to test the mini.iso image at: http://wookware.org/software/rpi4-test.iso
> That would be good. (I don't have an rpi4 to test on)

Just tested it, and I can confirm it fixes the NIC setup in the installer.

Just a small note that, because your image is ISOHybrid and only had EFI 
support when copied in DD mode (basically, it was missing formal 
/EFI/Boot/bootaa64.efi and /EFI/Boot/grubaa64.efi in the ISO9660 file 
system structure) I had to add those manually for boot to work, since we 
can't use straight DD copy for Pi boot.

In case you are interested, some information about how an installation 
media can be created for the Pi 4, and why a mere dd copy of an 
ISOHybrid won't do, can be found at: 
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=282839#p1713105.

> The one thing I'm not clear about is whether making the
> mdio-bcm-unimac module available in the nic-modules-5.10.0-6-arm64-di
> package on the installer image is sufficient, or if something needs to
> be done about the initramfs too?

For the Pi 4 netint purpose, the fix you applied should be enough.
For good measure, I went through a full system install using your ISO 
and saw no issues. Especially I validated that networking in the 
resulting installed system also worked fine.

> So I _think_ that means we don't need to change the initrd because
> both the installer and normal boot have the ethernet mdio driver
> available on localmedia, but I may be misunderstanding things.

My testing indicates that the assumption above should be correct.

> Right at the start of this bug you said:
>> Note that this is a rather critical regression (since it used to work
>> fine with previous bullseye ISOs)
> 
> I don't understand this. This module has presumably been missing from
> the installer packages all along, so I don't see how it could have
> worked before?

My guess is that kernel must have split Genet into Genet + MDIO recently 
because myself and a bunch of other people validated that the Bullseye 
testing netinst ISOs worked fine up to January this year, and we started 
to get "Unable to find mii" kernel messages with the 2021.01.04 ISO:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=282839&start=50#p1791942

> If it really is a regression

 From our perspective it is, though it does not appear to be one that 
was introduced by Debian, but something that was most likely inherited 
from kernel.

> then this could be deemed an RC bug and
> it is possible that it will get fixed for stable,

That would really help, because we spent a lot of time last year ironing 
things out to make sure that a distro like Bullseye could be installed 
easily on the Raspberry Pi 4 on release day (by fixing bugs such as 
#967918), and it's been very disappointing to see that what looks like a 
relatively straightforward issue to fix, such as adding a missing 
module, could bring us short of that goal. Once Bullseye is released, I 
expect a lot more people than the ones we had for testing, to want to 
give it a go, and having to tell them to wait for -r1 may just make them 
switch to a different distro.

But of course, it's up to Debian maintainership to decide the pros and 
cons of delaying the integration of this fix.

At any rate, thanks a lot for figuring out a proper fix.

Regards,

/Pete

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Thread

Bug#985956: #985956 - missing kernel module in installer Wookey <wookey@wookware.org> - 2021-05-14 04:20 +0200
  Bug#985956: #985956 - missing kernel module in installer Pete Batard <pete@akeo.ie> - 2021-05-14 13:50 +0200
    Bug#985956: #985956 - missing kernel module in installer Salvatore Bonaccorso <carnil@debian.org> - 2021-05-16 17:00 +0200

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