Re: [SLE] Root filesystem on LVM on SuSE 9.0 (Progress!)

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To: Gary.Gapinski@grc.nasa.gov
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 18:16:02 +0000

I have managed to get this to work! But until SuSE 9.0 behaves correctly by
default I'm not going to use this arrangement for fear of future package
updates breaking the system.

The only thing I needed to get the system to work was to add a line to the
'linuxrc' script found in the root directory of the initrd image:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/lib/i686:/lib

If this line is added before all the 'insmod' statements that load the SCSI
and LVM drivers, the system boots up without any problems.

I must also admit that when I double-checked the initrd on the system that
I was trying to fix I found that it *did* in fact have libc.so.6 in it, but
even so for some reason it wasn't being picked up until I specified the
LD_LIBARARY_PATH variable.

So, in conclusion, I can say that there is no reason why you have to have
ANYTHING outside the LVM. There is no need for a separate /boot partition,
and no need for a separate / or swap or anything else. Put the whole lot in
LVM-managed volumes and LILO is perfectly capable of finding the files it
needs, and the system is perfectly capable of booting up OK. But someone at
SuSE needs to tweak their distribution to support this out of the box since
the only way to get it to work currently is to:

* interrupt the first reboot after installation and start a Rescue system
* Activate and mount your filesystems:

vgscan
vgchange -ay system (if system is your volume group)
mount /dev/system/lvroot /mnt (for testing purposes I just used one
large logical volume and file system. In practice this is obviously not of
much benefit so in reality you'd have more mounts to do here!)

* chroot into the partially-installed system:

chroot /mnt

* Modify the linuxrc script found in initrd:

cp /boot/initrd /tmp/initrd.gz
gunzip /tmp/initrd.gz
mount /tmp/initrd /mnt
vi /mnt/linuxrc and add the line "export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/lib/i686:/lib"
before all the insmod statements. Save your changes.
umount /mnt
gzip /tmp/initrd
cp /tmp/initrd.gz /boot/initrd-whatever-kernel-version-you've-got

* Exit from the chrooted environment and reboot.

exit
shutdown -r now

* Voila!

I have been using a LVM on AIX for years and its advantages are very clear
to me. The ability to separate out different areas of disc storage is
extremely useful, as is the ability to extend or reduce those areas
dynamically. (Make sure you use reiserfs for online filesystem resizing - I
can't believe support for this on ext3, the default filesystem on Red Hat,
is simply non-existant but it is.) The sooner Linux completes its support
for this very useful tool the better! Hope someone at SuSE is listening!

Chris

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