------- Comment From skannery@in.ibm.com 2008-03-05 02:03 EDT-------
Redhat Team,
Any updates here..
Thanks, Supriya

Yes, it's empty. It's _supposed_ to be empty. It was a dumping ground for a
whole load of cruft, and all that cruft has been moved out into separate
packages, which ppc64-utils now requires.

I'd like to drop the ppc64-utils package from the distro but I lack the wit --
I'm not sure what magic causes it to be installed in the first place, and hence
how to ensure that the replacement packages are installed in its place.
Especially on upgrades.

Either yaboot requiring or more likely the comps file. To remove on upgrades we
can do in anaconda. I'll come up with a patch on the w/e if someone doesn't get
there first.

What about yum upgrades? Special cases in anaconda are frowned upon, aren't they?

Special cases are frowned upon in anaconda, yes.  Unfortunately, with 'yum upgrade' there's not much we 
can do since a single package can't really offer an Obsoletes on ppc64-utils.  However, with the latest 
version in rawhide being empty, it won't do harm if people leave it around.  If the comps file is updated to 
have it removed and the replacement packages listed in the base or core install (whatever the name is), 
the repodata will get updated and people can clean up their systems by doing 'yum list extras' to see what 
packages have been removed from the distribution but are still on their system.  That's a cleanup step I 
perform from time to time and I think it's acceptable for people taking the yum route for system 
upgrades.

The current state with the empty ppc64-utils package is reasonable enough. To
kill ppc64-utils off for real, we need to get the dependencies right for all the
new packages. 

ppc64-utils is currently required by mkinitrd, and it requires the following
packages:

yaboot  
powerpc-utils  
powerpc-utils-papr  
ps3pf-utils  
kernel-bootwrapper  

I think mkinitrd only really needs kernel-bootwrapper, and then only on iSeries.

I don't think anything else requires yaboot or any of the other packages (the
utils packages are new).

Strictly speaking, we only need powerpc-utils-papr on pSeries (and maybe
iSeries). We need ps3pf-utils on PS3, of course. And on a similar note, ideally
we'd only install iprutils on pSeries too.

yaboot should probably require powerpc-utils.

There's more, but keeping the ppc64-utils package around with no files was the
safe answer for now.

------- Comment From mohd.omar@in.ibm.com 2008-03-06 01:18 EDT-------
I basically searching for  mkzImage to create zImage for PPC. I was looking for
creating a diskless environment for PowerPCs.

mkinitrd --with "${MODULES[*]}" --net-dev "${NETDEV}" --fstab my-fstab
initrd-nfs-${KERN_VERSION}.img ${KERN_VERSION}

mkzimage vmlinuz-${KERN_VERSION} config-${KERN_VERSION} System.map-${KERN_VERSION} \
initrd-nfs-${KERN_VERSION}.img  /usr/share/ppc64-utils/zImage.stub
zImage-nfs-${KERN_VERSION}.img

How do I get mkzImage for F9Alpha ?

--Regards
Omar M

We no longer have our own 'speshul' script for this. We use the bootwrapper
which comes directly from the kernel, and which is now built as a sub-package of
the kernel by using the kernel's 'make bootwrapper_install' target.

This uses a script named 'wrapper', used as follows:
# This script takes a kernel binary and optionally an initrd image
# and/or a device-tree blob, and creates a bootable zImage for a
# given platform.

# Options:
# -o zImage     specify output file
# -p platform   specify platform (links in $platform.o)
# -i initrd     specify initrd file
# -d devtree    specify device-tree blob
# -s tree.dts   specify device-tree source file (needs dtc installed)
# -c            cache $kernel.strip.gz (use if present & newer, else make)
# -C prefix     specify command prefix for cross-building tools
#               (strip, objcopy, ld)
# -D dir        specify directory containing data files used by script
#               (default ./arch/powerpc/boot)
# -W dir        specify working directory for temporary files (default .)


This should suffice to replace your above command:

wrapper -i initrd-nfs-${KERN_VERSION}.img -o zImage-nfs-${KERN_VERSION].img
vmlinuz-${KERN_VERSION} 

------- Comment From mohd.omar@in.ibm.com 2008-03-11 01:24 EDT-------
David,

>>wrapper -i initrd-nfs-${KERN_VERSION}.img -o zImage-nfs-${KERN_VERSION].img
>>vmlinuz-${KERN_VERSION}

Using this script I am able to create zImage, which worked fine.

Perhaps we could capture this on

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/ArchSpecific/PPC

I've added a basic comment about ppc64-utils.

------- Comment From suzukikp@in.ibm.com 2008-03-11 08:16 EDT-------
(In reply to comment #22)
> David,
>
> >>wrapper -i initrd-nfs-${KERN_VERSION}.img -o zImage-nfs-${KERN_VERSION].img
> >>vmlinuz-${KERN_VERSION}
>
> Using this script I am able to create zImage, which worked fine.
>

Since this is NOTABUG and we have a well documented alternate solution
available, I am going to reject this one as NOTABUG.

Thanks

Suzuki