Bug 812672

Summary: yaboot does not accept \xHH characters while parsing device names
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: John Reiser <jreiser>
Component: yabootAssignee: David Woodhouse <dwmw2>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: unspecified Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 17CC: dwmw2, jmarkturner, jskala, karsten, pnasrat, tony
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: powerpc   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2013-08-01 00:04:32 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:

Description John Reiser 2012-04-15 20:45:42 UTC
Description of problem:  Booting an install DVD for Fedora 17 fails on PowerPC which uses yaboot, such as Apple Macintosh Mini G4 PowerPC. 

When creating an install DVD for Fedora 17 ppc, then pungi specifies a label such as "Fedora 17 ppc" to mkisofs.  At boot-for-install, then udev creates the corresponding "/dev/disk/by-label/Fedora\x2017\x20ppc".  However, dracut complains that "/dev/disk/by-label/Fedora_17_ppc" does not exist, and therefore install fails because of the mismatched name.

In /usr/share/lorax/ppc.tmpl the problem is concisely noted that yaboot freaks out upon seeing a backslash '\\' during parsing, and therefore lorax changes <DVD>/etc/yaboot.conf so that all device names substitute '_' for any character which is not is_alnum().

yaboot should adapt to the udev syntax "\xHH" to specify any character in hexadecimal.  pungi should work-around the problem by using the same technique as lorax.  When yaboot has caught up with udev, then both lorax and pungi should deactivate their work-arounds.


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
yaboot-1.3.17-2.fc16.ppc
lorax-17.13-1.fc17.ppc
pungi-2.10-1.fc17.noarch

How reproducible: every time


Steps to Reproduce:
1. Use pungi to create an install DVD for Fedora 17 ppc.
2. Boot the DVD for install.
3.
  
Actual results:  dracut complains "/dev/disk/by-label/Fedora_17_ppc does not exist" [note the underscores], drops into a dracut debug shell, and install cannot proceed.

Expected results: Normal successful install: dracut invokes anaconda, anaconda uses the DVD as source for packages to install.


Additional info:

Comment 1 Karsten Hopp 2012-04-23 10:20:06 UTC
Does you DVD device show up as /dev/hda ? Then this is a different problem as hda isn't handled correctly and /dev/disk/by-label/Fedora_17_ppc doesn't get created.
Please try to boot with 'linux root=live:/dev/hda' and report if this fixes the boot problems.
Please note that we've disabled the pata_pmac module in the latest kernels and the next test ISOs should use pata_macio which handles the DVD devices of older MACs as /dev/sr0 and avoids this problem.

Comment 2 John Reiser 2012-04-23 17:11:22 UTC
No, my DVD device shows up as /dev/sr0.  I build my own DVD using pungi, and in this case I re-ran the final mkisofs using "-V Fedora_17_ppc" (instead of "-V Fedora 17 ppc") as a work-around for the mis-handling of space characters (' ', ASCII 040, 0x20) in labels (which dracut represents as "Fedora\x2017\x20ppc"), and to agree with the lorax work-around of substituting underscore '_' for any non-isalnum() character in a label, as revealed in the on-platter /etc/yaboot.conf, which has
   append "root=live:CDLABEL=Fedora_17_ppc rd.luks=0 ..."
The kernel on the platter is stock 3.3.1-5, in which module pata_macio has replaced the [no-longer configured] pmac module. Thus /dev/sda has replaced /dev/hda.  See bug 810579.

In order to double-check, I will run pungi+lorax again, and not change the label that pungi specifies to mkisofs for the DVD.  Unless lorax has reverted its workaround (of substituting underscore '_' for space ' ' in this case), I predict that the label on the platter will be "Fedora 17 ppc" [note the spaces, as specified by pungi to mkisofs], but the boot command will have the result of
   append "root=live:CDLABEL=Fedora_17_ppc rd.luks=0 ..."
[note the underscores, as specified by the work-around in lorax].  Thus the label will not match, dracut will not find the DVD, and dracut will complain that /dev/disk/by-label/Fedora\x2017\x20ppc [note the two '\x20' representations of space character ' '] cannot be found.

Comment 3 John Reiser 2012-04-24 15:14:12 UTC
As predicted in Comment #2, a vanilla install DVD for Fedora 17 ppc (composed from -branched, -updates, -updates-testing, and -mashed) fails to boot into the installer.  I get:
   dracut Warning: Unable to process initqueue
   dracut Warnning: /dev/disk/by-label/Fedora_17_ppc does not exist
What is in /dev/disk/by-label is:
   Fedora\x2017\x10ppc -> ../../sr0
   Macintosh\x20HD -> ../../sda4
   bootstrap -> ../../sda2
This is with:
   yaboot-1.3.17
   pungi-2.10-1.fc17.noarch
   lorax-17.14-1.fc17.ppc
   anaconda-17.21-1.fc17.ppc

Comment 4 Fedora End Of Life 2013-07-03 22:17:53 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 17 is nearing its end of life.
Approximately 4 (four) weeks from now Fedora will stop maintaining
and issuing updates for Fedora 17. It is Fedora's policy to close all
bug reports from releases that are no longer maintained. At that time
this bug will be closed as WONTFIX if it remains open with a Fedora 
'version' of '17'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' 
to a later Fedora version prior to Fedora 17's end of life.

Bug Reporter:  Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that 
we may not be able to fix it before Fedora 17 is end of life. If you 
would still like  to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it 
against a later version  of Fedora, you are encouraged  change the 
'version' to a later Fedora version prior to Fedora 17's end of life.

Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's 
lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a 
more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes 
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Comment 5 Fedora End Of Life 2013-08-01 00:04:39 UTC
Fedora 17 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2013-07-30. Fedora 17 is 
no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further 
security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of 
Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version.

Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.