Bug#980209: calamares-settings-debian: The assumption of "bitness" here seems incorrect.

[Aaron Griesel]

Package: calamares-settings-debian
Version: 11.0.5-2
Followup-For: Bug #980209
X-Debbugs-Cc: KsWoo...@yahoo.com

Dear Maintainer,
This problem seems to be stemming from
calamares-settings-debian_all and from
calamares_i386, as maitained by the Debian project.
The problems noted here do not show up in the amd64 versions.

* What led up to the situation?
Attempting to install a 32 bit Debian based distro (PeppermintOS) from the live ISO.

* What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or ineffective)?
[ ineffective ]
During a normal install with no changes made in the live OS the process
fails at 65% to 75% completetion with an error about grub-efi-amd64 not found.
`apt-get` is looking for a specific version of grub-efi (amd64)
but this is 32 bit install and should be looking for grub-efi-ia32 instead.

In the file `/usr/sbin/bootloader-config`, the script is attempting to install
grub-efi-amd64 in any or every system, including the i386 version.
This package seems to be unavailable while installing an i386 based OS.
Even though the board or VM might be 64 capable the amd64 packages are
not available and erroneously trying to be installed.

[ less ineffective ]
Changing part of /usr/sbin/bootloader-config to
~~~
echo "Running bootloader-config..."

if [ -d /sys/firmware/efi/efivars ] && [ "$(uname -m)" != "amd64" ]; then
echo " * Installing grub-efi-ia32 (uefi)..."
DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive chroot $CHROOT apt-get install -y --install-recommends grub-efi-ia32 cryptsetup keyutils
elif [ -d /sys/firmware/efi/efivars ]; then
echo " * Installing grub-efi (uefi)..."
DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive chroot $CHROOT apt-get install -y --install-recommends grub-efi-amd64 cryptsetup keyutils
else
echo " * install grub... (bios)"
DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive chroot $CHROOT apt-get install -y --install-recommends grub-pc cryptsetup keyutils
fi
~~~
This Does help. It still gets an error, later in the process, complaining that the
grub install routine has failed with the following message.
`grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi/ --bootloader-id=debian --force`
This is because the "efi_bitness" in /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/calamares/modules/bootloader/main.py
has set "efi_word_size" to "64"

In PeppermintOS we have changed the default behaviour of
"Apt::Install-Recommends" from 1 to 0 .
Adding "--install-recommends" in /usr/sbin/bootloader-config does install the recommended software.
This gets mokutil, grub-efi-ia32-signed and the shim-signed packages needed to for EFI secure boot.
Neither --install-recommends nor --no-install-recommends accomplishes
anything in the test VMs.

[ more effective ]
In the file /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/calamares/modules/bootloader/main.py ,
in the function "efi_word_size()" , forcing this value to "32", along
with the previous edits will successfully complete the install without
errors.
Although the calamares installer completes without error,
the system still fails to boot using grub-efi-ia32.
Running `dpkg -l | grep -E "(grub|shim|mokutil|efibootmgr)"` shows the expected packages
are installed.
Running `ls /boot/efi/EFI/debian/` shows the expected files there
I have not had actual 32 bit hardware for testing , this has been in a Qemu VM.

For a follow-up I will have sourced a 32bit bare-metal machine with EFI,
And will also try this on 64bit hardware, with efi_bitness still forced to 32.


* What was the outcome of this action(s)?
A partially installed system that can only be booted using rescue media.

* What outcome did you expect instead?
A fully installed system closely matching the amd64 version WITH grub-efi-ia32 working.

-- System Information:
**** For the Host Machine ****
Debian Release: 11.1
APT prefers stable-updates
APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'stable'), (10, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 5.10.0-9-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU threads)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages calamares-settings-debian depends on:
pn calamares <none>
ii cryptsetup 2:2.3.5-1
ii dconf-gsettings-backend [gsettings-backend] 0.38.0-2
ii keyutils 1.6.1-2
pn qml-module-qtquick-window2 <none>
pn qml-module-qtquick2 <none>

calamares-settings-debian recommends no packages.

calamares-settings-debian suggests no packages.