3.6. Pre-Installation Hardware and Operating System Setup

This section will walk you through pre-installation hardware setup, if any, that you will need to do prior to installing Debian. Generally, this involves checking and possibly changing BIOS/system firmware settings for your system. The BIOS or system firmware is the core software used by the hardware; it is most critically invoked during the bootstrap process (after power-up).

3.6.1. How to update bare metal ppc64el firmware

Der er et uddrag fra IBM PowerKVM on IBM POWER8.

Open Power Abstraction Layer (OPAL) is the system firmware in the stack of POWER processor-based server.

There may be instances when the user might have to upgrade the Power Systems firmware to a more recent level to acquire new features or additional support for devices.

Sikr dig at de følgende krav er opfyldt:

  • et operativsystem er aktivet på systemet;

  • .img-filen for OPAL-niveauet som brugeren skal opdatere til;

  • maskinen ikke er under HMC-kontrol.

Power Systems has two sides of flash to boot firmware from, namely permanent and temporary. This provides a way to test firmware updates on the temporary side of the flash before committing the tested changes to the permanent side, thereby committing the new updates.

Udfør de følgende trin for opdateringen:

  1. Save the level of the existing firmware before really updating. In ASM, in the system menu, click Service Aids -> Service Processor Command Line, and run the following command:

    cupdcmd -f
    

  2. Download the .img file of the level of firmware to be updated to a location in the host filesystem. Refer to IBM Fix Central for downloading the image file.

    Verificer det hentede aftryk ved at afvikle den følgende kommando og gemme resultatet.

    $update_flash -v -f <file_name.img>
    

  3. Opdater firmwaren ved at afvikle den følgende kommando.

    $update_flash -f <file_name.img>
    

    [Bemærk] Bemærk

    • Kommandoen genstarter systemet, og eventuelle sessioner vil derfor gå tabt.

    • Genstart eller sluk derfor ikke for systemet før det er kørende igen.

  4. Verify the updated firmware level of the temporary side of the flash as in step 1.

  5. In case the update has to be reverted, the user can do so by running this command:

        $update_flash -r
    

    Rejection would reject only the temporary side of the flash. Therefore, the new level should be committed to the permanent side only after thorough testing of the new firmware.

    The new updated level can be committed to the permanent side of the flash by running the following command.

    $update_flash -c
    

3.6.2. Opdatering af KVM guest firmware (SLOF)

Slimline Open Firmware (SLOF) is an implementation of the IEEE 1275 standard. It can be used as partition firmware for pSeries machines running on QEMU or KVM.

The package qemu-slof is, in fact, a dependency of package qemu-system-ppc (which also provides the virtual package qemu-system-ppc64), and can be installed or updated via apt tool on Debian-based distros. Like so:

# apt install qemu-slof

SLOF can also be installed into rpm-based distribution systems, given the proper repository or rpm package. Additionally, the upstream source code is available at http://github.com/leilihh/SLOF.

Thus, one can use a different SLOF file rather than the default, when running qemu-system, by adding the command line argument -bios <slof_file> when starting qemu.

3.6.3. Opdatering af PowerKVM hypervisor

3.6.3.1. Instruktioner for Netboot-installation

Du skal bruge en DHCP/TFTP (BOOTP)-server, samt en internetserver. Efter du har hentet ibm-powerkvm-*-ppc64-service-*.iso, monter loop aftrykket og pak det ud i en mappe indenfor din HTT-servers www root-struktur (f.eks. wwwroot):

# cd <directory-where-the-iso-is>
# mkdir ./iso
# sudo mount -o loop ibm-powerkvm-*-ppc64-service-*.iso ./iso
# cp -a ./iso/* <path-to-wwwroot>

Opret filen petitboot.conf file i en mappe under din tftproot, f.eks. /tftproot/powerkvm, med det følgende indhold:

label PowerKVM Automated Install
kernel http://YOUR-SERVER-IP/SOME-PATH-TO-wwwroot/ppc/ppc64/vmlinuz
initrd http://YOUR-SERVER-IP/SOME-PATH-TO-wwwroot/ppc/ppc64/initrd.img
append root=live:http://YOUR-SERVER-IP/SOME-PATH-TO-wwwroot/LiveOS/squashfs.img repo=http://YOUR-SERVER-IP/SOME-PATH-TO-wwwroot/packages rd.dm=0 rd.md=0 console=hvc0 console=tty0

Redigering af din dhcpd.conf, angiv dette direktiv i begyndelsen:

option conf-file code 209 = text;

Tilføj systemdirektivet:

host <your-system> {
    hardware ethernet <system macaddr>
    fixed-address <system ip>;
    option host-name "<system hostname>";
    option conf-file "<powerkvm/petitboot.conf>";
 }

Genstart dhcp-serveren.

Start din PowerLinux-maskine op.

There should be the following option at petitboot (select it):

"Power KVM Automated Install" 

The installer menu should appear automatically.

3.6.3.2. Instruktioner for dvd

Opstart ISO ibm-powerkvm-*-ppc64-service-*.iso (enten brænd en dvd eller lav den virtuel hvis QEMU bruges) og vent så på opstarten.

Der bør være den følgende indstilling med petitboot (vælg den):

"POWERKVM_LIVECD" 

Installationsmenuen kommer frem automatisk.