[P10] CAS : last kernel not auto booted

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Due to the fact that the work and backlog on grub2 in jammy is pretty big and the complexity high, I discussed with juliank (Foundations) the other day, and the outcome was to transfer this ticket into a FFe, just to be prepared.

The patch that is in discussion here is especially for Power 10, which is planned to be supported by Ubuntu Server 22.04 (jammy) (and is customer driven).
Since it's uncertain if a re-worked patch can be picked-up in time for the jammy Feature Freeze on Feb. the 24th, I want to raise the attention of the Ubuntu Release Team,
and kindly ask for acknowledge.

Required tests on this will be done with the help of the customer/partner IBM.
_________________________

== Comment: #0 - Frederic Bonnard <email address hidden> - 2021-04-26 02:32:28 ==
Hi,

testing Debian/Ubuntu installation with OpenQA on a P10 LPAR with a virtual optical device, the LPAR boots the iso till grub menu.
First entry is selected and Enter gets pressed.
The kernel starts and calls ibm,client-architecture-support .
My understanding is that either it returns or reboots with the new feature set
and in which case, the grub menu shouldn't pop out again and the last booted kernel should be used with the same parameters.
But it is not the case at the moment, the iso grub menu pops out again.

This does not happen all the time. Sometimes the kernel does not reboot and (maybe the required settings are ok but in this case, I don't know how it got set).

Here is a video showing this behavior on Debian (kernel 5.10.0-6, grub 2.04, http://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/ppc64el/daily/netboot/mini.iso).
Same on Ubuntu 20.04 daily (kernel 5.4.0-72.80, grub 2.04, http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-server/focal/daily-live/current/focal-live-server-ppc64el.iso)
Regards,

F.

== Comment: #1 - Frederic Bonnard <email address hidden> - 2021-04-26 02:33:14 ==

== Comment: #2 - Frederic Bonnard <email address hidden> - 2021-04-26 02:33:48 ==

== Comment: #3 - Diego Pereira Domingos <email address hidden> - 2021-04-29 10:52:18 ==
Hi Fr?deric,

we will need to push the required patches for CAS reboot into UBUNTU/DEBIAN.

== Comment: #8 - Diego Pereira Domingos <email address hidden> - 2021-08-09 08:54:07 ==

== Comment: #10 - Diego Pereira Domingos <email address hidden> - 2021-08-10 08:13:10 ==
Hello Canonical,

we need this patch in grub so it can support CAS reboot for ppc64le

Thanks

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[Julian Andres Klode (juliank)]

This patch is too automagical for upstream, as was mentioned in 2014 and remains unaddressed:

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-grub/2014-01/msg00029.html

This should be implemented in a module that gets loaded in the config file and then sets the boot label, and not forced upon users.

I also think it's important for the installer to not just boot through to the hard disk, or the installed system to boot to the installer just because that was booted last.

[Julian Andres Klode (juliank)]

I think what you want as a behavior is to have a timeout too and allow the user to override this.

"Booting last entry, press any key to cancel".

Like it should set a default entry but not boot immediately, instead have a normal-ish countdown (present the countdown even if there is no countdown normally)

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------- Comment From <email address hidden> 2022-02-11 07:35 EDT-------
Hi Julian,

Thank you for your reply - this was a very nice bunch of info and ideas.

This patch is very old and, although not accepted upstream, we have this running for a long time on others distros.

We are making a big effort to make those old features/code upstream and avoid this situation.

Regarding your second comment - i.e, the timeout behavior - do you think this would be enough to make it on Ubuntu? I understand that it wouldn't make upstream, but we could have this feature running while we don't have a proper module upstream.

Let me know what you think.

Thank you.

--
Diego

[Julian Andres Klode (juliank)]

I think that's ok. The important point for me is that a user can override it after the reboot if needed for some reason, not that it's in a module loaded by a config file, as we'd always load the module anyway.

[Frank Heimes (fheimes)]

Hi @Diego, may I ask about the status of a revised patch?
I'm asking because we are getting extremely close to the end of the 22.04 development cycle (and are already past feature freeze). Hence it would be good to know if this is still valid for this cycle, or if it need to be moved to the next cycle (22.10).

[Łukasz Zemczak (sil2100)]

I'll switch this to 'Incomplete' for now so that we know we're still thinking about if this is something we still target for 22.04 or not. Please switch to 'New' once we have more info!

[Frank Heimes (fheimes)]

Withdrawing as FFe (and unsubscribing the Ubuntu Release Team), since it will not arrive in time.
New plan is to target this for 22.10, with the option to potentially get it in to 22.04.1.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

> New plan is to target this for 22.10, with the option to potentially get it in to 22.04.1.

The last status update was a request for a revised patch in March and there has been no news since then. We are now in feature freeze for Ubuntu 22.10. Unassigning Foundations because my understanding is there is no action for us to take. Please assign again when this bug is ready to be worked.

[Frank Heimes (fheimes)]

Yes, this moved meanwhile to 23.04 (earliest), due to various reasons.
We should have removed the assigned team for now, sorry for not having that done.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for grub2 (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Frank Heimes (fheimes)]

Planned new target is 24.04.