[ydl-gen] YDL 5 installation on Xserve

[Alex Holst]

Hi Atro,

> On Mon, 17 Sep 2007, Atro Tossavainen wrote:
> 
> > If I check "Review and modify", I get to start from another interesting
> > default partition table.  Apple_Bootstrap, /boot and root on the first
> > hard drive, swap on the second hard drive.  Deleting swap moves root
> > to the second hard drive.  Deleting root and boot I now have a partition
> > table where Apple_Bootstrap is on the first hard drive, nothing else,
> > and the second drive is completely empty.  I then click on RAID, and
> > the only option presented is to create a software RAID partition (fair
> > enough, it's hard to build a metadevice without partitions to build it
> > on).  I proceed to create a 100 MB swRAID partition on both drives to
> > use as /boot.  The next step is to create the metadevice.  It gives me
> > the options of RAID0, RAID1 and RAID1 (yes, the latter twice).  I make
> > /dev/md0 a RAID1 of /dev/hde3 and /dev/hdg2, with ext3, to be mounted
> > at /boot.  I repeat the steps for a 16 GB partition to be used as root
> > (hde4 and hdg3), and for a 2 GB partition to be used as swap (hde4 and
> > hdg3 again - it has moved root into hde5 and hdg4 in the meantime).
> > 
> > The scheme is now deficient in the sense that the second hard drive is
> > missing an Apple_Bootstrap partition.  If the first hard drive goes,
> > all data is safe but I will be unable to boot.

I certainly know, what frustration you are going through. I recently had
exactly the same experiences - however on a different hardware, a beige
G3 DT.

After booting the kernel and getting the installer [anaconda] to run,
whatever I tried turned out with the exact same results as you
described. The YDL version I used was 5.0.1 with the 20070326 DVD. [I
have to admit, that my procedure required a recompile of YDL's install
kernel, as my 2 drives are attached to an ACARD controller, which is not
available in the stock kernel >YDL5] - however ...

The first success came when I tried the very same thing with the Fedora
FC6 install CDs - and voila, almost out of the box, it worked - even
with LVM ontop of a RAID1 device. The only caveat: one HAS to manually
initialize the hard drives with a DOS style partition map - otherwise
RAID autodetection WILL NOT work [one only realizes that AFTER the
install has completed and the first reboot panics since the kernel
cannot find the root partition]. This step has to be done from the
command line via parted BEFORE the installer gets into the partitioning
module. Once initialized, the FC6 installer lets you partition the
drives, create RAID partitions and even set LVM ontop of of a RAID
device - which is what I did in order to avoid the annoying behaviour of
the partition druid and the "ever changing' partitions you mentioned
above. I chose to ONLY have 2 partitions per hd: one for the /boot stuff
and one huge one for the rest [which will be further partitioned by
LVM]. Once the RAID1 device was configured through the partition druid,
I chose to format /dev/md0 as LVM physical volume which then allowed me
to further partition that into LV_00 [/] and LV_01 [/home] [swap is on a
3rd hd that I need for booting, as this is an OldWorl machine, I need at
least one bootable HFS partition on a hd with an Apple style partition
table - feel free to have swap in the LVM setup as well though - it
works absolutely flawless on my HP box running FC7]:

[user at host ~]$ mount
/dev/mapper/RVG_00-LV_00 on / type ext3 (rw)
/dev/hde1 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
/dev/hdg1 on /boot2 type ext3 (rw)
/dev/mapper/RVG_00-LV_01 on /home type ext3 (rw)
[... other mountpoints omitted ...]

[user at host ~]$ sudo lvdisplay 
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Name                /dev/RVG_00/LV_00
  VG Name                RVG_00
  LV UUID                hYXMlt-FjgS-QkoW-xLmP-vxXA-hTDo-FokIF9
  LV Write Access        read/write
  LV Status              available
  # open                 1
  LV Size                15.00 GB
  Current LE             3840
  Segments               1
  Allocation             inherit
  Read ahead sectors     0
  Block device           253:0
   
  --- Logical volume ---
  LV Name                /dev/RVG_00/LV_01
  VG Name                RVG_00
  LV UUID                unLNoA-ZerK-s4H7-vshI-391t-J56p-DzbR0X
  LV Write Access        read/write
  LV Status              available
  # open                 1
  LV Size                50.00 GB
  Current LE             12800
  Segments               1
  Allocation             inherit
  Read ahead sectors     0
  Block device           253:1

[user at host ~]$ sudo pvdisplay 
  --- Physical volume ---
  PV Name               /dev/md0
  VG Name               RVG_00
  PV Size               74.44 GB / not usable 3.00 MB
  Allocatable           yes 
  PE Size (KByte)       4096
  Total PE              19055
  Free PE               2415
  Allocated PE          16640
  PV UUID               df7Af2-1gAI-d9Nu-xbQG-wZbv-5Ffg-Ipz9Ns

[user at host ~]$ cat /proc/mdstat 
Personalities : [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] 
md0 : active raid1 hdg2[0] hde2[1]
      78052352 blocks [2/2] [UU]

After all this preparation, the FC6 install went as smooth as one could
imagine [except for the bootloader, due to the OldWorld hw].

Now, that all the drives were set up and proven to work, I took the YDL
DVD and tried to install over FC6 by NOT changing any of the
partitioning layout, but ONLY chose to format my /dev/hde1
and /dev/hdg1, as well as the /dev/mapper/RVG_00-LV_00
and /dev/mapper/RVG_00-LV_01 partitions and have them formatted as ext3.
After the FC6 installer had set the partitions up correctly, the YDL
installer saw them and treated them nicely ;} and now happily installed
on the two LVM partitions ontop of a MD device !!! Long road - but
worked.

Unfortunately, due to some other issues, which I have never been able to
figure out, I had to go back to FC6, as in graphic mode, that particular
hardware would freeze randomly in YDL5 without any indication as to why
[although it ran for years on YDL, starting with YDL2.0 till the latest
YDL4]. FC6 runs very stable on it though [bummer - I had been a YDL fan
and extensive user since the YDL2.0 days - at lest I'm still following
the list ;]

Hope this will help your case somewhat ...

Cheers,
Alex


-- 
Alex Holst
Hergulesse Design
Key West
United States of America