Re: Further installation woes WAS: trouble installing RAID and LVM.

On Mon, Feb 13, 2006 at 11:15:25PM -0500, hendrik@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Tue, Feb 14, 2006 at 01:13:01AM +0000, Peter Colton wrote:
On Monday 13 February 2006 20:29, hendrik@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Sun, Feb 12, 2006 at 04:24:44AM +0000, Peter Colton wrote:
On Saturday 11 February 2006 14:09, hendrik@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
While installing debian-testing-amd64-netinst (downloaded 2006 02 03)
When I got to the point where I get to select "configure software RAID"
I am told,
[!!] pARTITION DISKS
Before RAID can be configured, the changes have to be written
.....
The partition table is the following devices are changed
RAID device #0
Write the changes to the storage devices and configure RAID?

I choose Yes, and am told,

The kernel was unable to re-read the partition table on /dev/md/0
(Invalid argument). This means Linux won't know anything about the
modifications you made unito you reboot. You chould reboot your
computer before doing anything with /dev/md/0

Well, rebooting restarts the install, which just gets me to the same
point. It does seem to recognise my RAID, by the way. That had been
set up ages ago. It just doesn't seem to get past the above issues.

If I ignore the lamentations and continue anyway, can't get
any further. My next step is to configure LVM on that RAID drive.
I can't get anywhere with that. I have an existing LVM partition
(111G) on the RAID drive from an earlier practice intall, and I want it
deleted. But it refuses to do that.

Somehow I suspect it is mishandling the RAID in some subtle way, and
possibly finding LVM information on the constituent partitions instead
of on the proper RAID device. But I could be wrong.

It's conceivable that this problem is AMD64 specific, but nothing I've
seen so far suggests that -- otherwise I'd have posted this to an AMD
mailing list.

-- hendrik

Hello hendrik,

The link below should be of help to you. Its a howto for setting up
mirror raid 0 but its how you start the install with the sarge installer
that should be of intrest to you.

http://nepotismia.com/debian/raidinstall/part1.html

Start the install with the expert26 option and then pick the md module
for the a raid enabled kernel.

I'll have to do it again with the printouts of that page beside ne to make
sure, but to the best of my memory, I did install etch in expert mode, and
I did ask for the md installer component. I also asked for the lvm
component.

-- hendrik

Regards

peter colton

Hello hendrik,

I think you will need to install the lvmcfg module at the start of a expert
install and I would say allso the md module. It the raid 1 method that I am
use to, not lvm.

Yes. That's what I did. I do include the lvmcfg module. I use raid1,
then I specify that the raid1 volume is to be used as a physical volume
for LVM. But I suspect something is wrong with the way my hard disks
are set up, and it's interfering with the installation -- as if it is
reading inconsistent information from a previous LVM installation.

I have previously istalled partitions with the i386 sarge, and the
AMD64 sarge. I followed instructions on the web -- well after
installation -- about setting up the RAID1 and the LVM. They seemed
to work fine until I rebooted. I suspect I did not do something
right, because when I tried changing the LVM setup it would complain
there were two logical volumes with the same name. My guess it that
it had recognised the logical volumes *before* recognising RAID (in
fact, it may never had recognised the RAID), and, of course, both
hda3 and hdb3 (which I have now moved physically to hdc3) had
identical contents.

So now the two partitions making up the RAID may have different and
inconsistent LVM partitioning information. Even if I delete the
RAID-related partitions, and then reconstruct them, the newly created
RAID seems to have LVM stuff already there. But it doesn't appear to
be usable.

-- hendrik

Still no joy. Carefully followed the instructions on that web page, and
got nowhere -- at least, the same stuff happened as last time --
inability to reread the partition table, and later, inability do deal
with logical volumes. Yes, I included the installer modulers for lvm
and raid, and for good measure, also the one for mouse-usage, and evms
(just in case)

But I continued the install anyway. I was installing the system to
/dev/hda1, which was not part of a RAID or a logical volume. It went
nicely. I had it install grub, uneventfully. When I had it install
lilo to boot from /dev/fd0, however, it complainmed that that wasn't a
hard disk. Really, I think I should have been able to boot from a
floppy. So I had it install lilo bootine from /dev/hda, which created
an appropriate configuration file (which I would be able to edit later),
and then had it intall grub to /dev/.hda, which worked. I've discovered
in the past it's good to have as many different ways to boot as
possible.

The reboot into the newly installed system went smoothly. But then came
the time for package-selection. Even choosing just a minimal system, it
complained about:

* E: Unable to correct problems, you have held back broken packages.
* E: Unable to correct dependencies, some packages cannot be installed
* E: Unable to resolve some dependencies
*
* Some packages had unmet dependencies. This may mean that you have
* requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
* distribution tht some requested packages have not yet been created
* or moved out of Incoming.

* The following packages have unmet dependencies
* python-minimal: Depends: python 2.3 (>2.3.5-1) which is a virtual
package
* report-bug: Depends: pythin 2.3 which is a cirtual package
* locales: Conflicts: base-config but 2.76 is to be installed
* python: Depends: puthon2.3 (>=2.3.5-1) which is a virtual package
* tasksel: aptitude failed
* Press Enter to continue

I had specified manual package selection, but never got the opportunity
to manually select any packages. I got past this stage by removing the
asterisk from beside "minimal system", thereby asking it to install
*nothing*, not even a minimal system.

Once I actually got to log in as root, I edited /etc/lilo.conf and
got the system to boot proberly from a floppy. Now I could boot from
floppy as well as from /dev/hda.

I then ran aptitude, intending to try to fix things up. Now, however,
the complaints were completely different.

I did a U, to upgrade to current versions of everything, and then 'g',
and in the list of proposed actions, was told that aptitude wanted to
delete
base-config
libapt-pkg-perl
localization-config

Investigating, I was told
base-config is empty, no longer used, can be deleted without harm
libapt-pkg-perl was unavailable
localization-config depended on lipapt-pkg-perl, so broken.

Clearly a few things need to improved before etch goes stable....

In a few days, I will try again, this time setting up a smaller RAID
partition for immediate use, leaving the bulk of the hard disk free for
later installation of RAID and LVM when I figure out what's been going
so wrong ... or else that I learn how to set up a RAID drive inder LVM
in such a way that everything is recognised upon reboot.

I suspect I had trouble with RAID-nonrecognition in the past when I was
still trying to install sarge... That time I set up the RAID1 and
LVM by hand. I suspect that on reboot the RAID was not recognised, but
the (now duplicate) LVM were -- at least the first one was, and the
second was considered invalid because of name duplications. When I
tried to reconfigure LVM, only one copy was, presumably, changed,
setting the stage for trouble ever since. Perhaps I should do a
destructive bad-block check on /dev/hda3 and /dev/hdc3 just to clear
everything out properly. WOuld that do the trick, or is there stll
information elsewhere I need to clean out to be able to start over?

By the the way, what is the RAID partition I built on /dev/hda3 and
/dev/hdc3 likely to be called?

-- hendrik


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