[ydl-gen] YDL 5 installation on Xserve

[Bill Fink]

Hi,

I know what I'd try but I can't guarantee how applicable it might
be to your situation.

I'd install YDL 5.0.2 onto an external FireWire drive, boot that,
use rsync to copy the FireWire "/" root filesystem to the RAID1
root file system, update /etc/fstab and /etc/yaboot.conf as necessary
on the RAID1 root file system, and then hopefully reboot into the
RAID1 root file system (and re-run "ybin -v" after the reboot to
make the boot process be properly associated with the internal
disks rather than the external FireWire drive, but it would be
good to leave a yaboot entry that allows booting back to the
FireWire drive should that ever become necessary).

						-Bill



On Wed, 29 Aug 2007, Atro Tossavainen wrote:

> Hello again, been away for a while.  Having a slight problem here.
> 
> I finally decided to get rid of YDL 2.3 and replace it with the current
> 5.0.2 version on the Xserve (G4, 1 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 2*60 GB IDE drives).
> 
> I'm starting from scratch - the drives were as good as empty (I
> briefly had OS X on the machine today).
> 
> I plan, as before, to dedicate the machine to YDL.  It will not have
> OS X at all.
> 
> I can't install from CDs.  The "yellowdog-5.0.2-20070627-disc1.iso"
> boots from CD, but the on-board IDE on the Xserve does not appear to
> be supported so the on-board CD drive is invisible.  I also can't boot
> the machine from an external FireWire DVD, it seems.  So I'm booting
> from CD, but installing the contents of the 7/11 DVD on a system
> booted from the 6/27 CDs is impossible, so I have to copy the contents
> of the 6/27 CDs to somewhere on the network (or onto a FireWire
> portable drive) and install from there.
> 
> Now that I've got the installer going, I want to use software mirroring
> on pretty much everything.  The installer now seems to allow this.  I
> would like to have the partitions laid out as follows:
> 
> /dev/hd{e,g}2	Apple_Bootstrap	1MB
> 	3	Linux_RAID	100MB
> 	4	Linux_RAID	16GB
> 	5	Linux_RAID	1GB
> 	6	Linux_RAID	256MB
> 	7	Linux_RAID	the rest
> 
> with the idea that /dev/mdX = RAID1 of /dev/hd{e,g}Y for X=0,1,2,3
> and RAID0 for X=4, and Y=X+3 in every case.
> 
> /dev/md0 is going to be /boot,
> /dev/md1 is going to be /,
> /dev/md2 is going to be swap,
> /dev/md3 is going to be a small partition for the AFS cache, and
> /dev/md4 is going to be a scratch partition.
> 
> I've tried creating the partitions with the installer, but it seems to
> want to rearrange things in a nonsensical order (for example, putting
> the Apple_Bootstrap partition on the second drive at the very end of
> everything, and creating new partitions in the beginning of the disk
> and moving previously existing partitions behind the new one), so I've
> created the partitions by hand in pdisk to ensure that the layout on
> both hard drives is identical, and am using "Custom Layout" in the
> installer only to mark the RAID partitions as "Format as ext3, mount
> under wherever".  I've mdadm'd them by hand to ensure that the RAID
> arrangements work, and I've created file systems on the RAID meta-
> devices by hand to ensure that that works, too.
> 
> When the partition scheme has been okay'd, and the installer prints out
> the bit about how the complete log will be in /root/install.log, it
> starts to create the file systems.  But before it does that, it forgets
> to mdadm --assemble the RAIDs, and if I've done that in the shell by
> hand before hitting Enter there, it explicitly stops them, leaving the
> machine without any block devices where the file systems could be
> created.  This of course causes the installer to bomb.
> 
> So far, I haven't found a way around this.  All hints are welcome.
> I'm not going to run a system without mirrored root.  I can putz
> around with the anaconda scripts if need be, but I'd prefer a more
> general solution.