Bug#260763: Installed on a PC with root and boot on a logical volume
Package: installation-reports
Debian-installer-version: http://cdimage.debian.org/pub/cdimage-testing/daily/i386/20040719/sarge-i386-businesscard.iso
uname -a: Linux rakuen 2.6.7-1-686 #1 Thu Jul 8 05:36:53 EDT 2004 i686 GNU/Linux
Date: 19 July 2004
Method: I installed via network using a cable modem connection
behind a simple firewall. DHCP was available.
Machine: Home Built P4 with Intel i850 based motherboard
Processor: P4 based 1.7 celeron
Memory: 512MB Rambus
Root Device: SCSI drive root device /dev/rakuen/root
Root Size/partition table:
This installation used only LVM2 to manage system volumes. Doing this
required using lilo as the boot loader. To the best of my knowledge grub
doesn't support have the /boot files in a logical volume. Whereas lilo
supports this without issue. The outputs of pvscan, vgscan, and lvscan are
below. The pvcreate program was run manually on /dev/sda. There is no PC
partition table.
--| output of pvscan |--
PV /dev/sda VG rakuen lvm2 [16.96 GB / 0 free]
Total: 1 [16.96 GB] / in use: 1 [16.96 GB] / in no VG: 0 [0 ]
--| output of vgscan |--
Reading all physical volumes. This may take a while...
Found volume group "rakuen" using metadata type lvm2
--| output of lvscan |--
ACTIVE '/dev/rakuen/root' [4.96 GB] inherit
ACTIVE '/dev/rakuen/swap' [2.00 GB] inherit
ACTIVE '/dev/rakuen/home' [10.00 GB] inherit
Output of lspci:
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82850 850 (Tehama) Chipset Host Bridge (MCH) (rev 04)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82850 850 (Tehama) Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 04)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BA/CA/DB/EB/ER Hub interface to PCI Bridge (rev 04)
0000:00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BA ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 04)
0000:00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801BA IDE U100 (rev 04)
0000:00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801BA/BAM SMBus (rev 04)
0000:00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801BA/BAM AC'97 Audio (rev 04)
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R200 QM [Radeon 9100]
0000:02:01.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 41)
0000:02:01.1 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 41)
0000:02:01.2 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB 2.0 (rev 02)
0000:02:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82801BA/BAM/CA/CAM Ethernet Controller (rev 03)
0000:02:0b.0 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec AHA-2940U/UW / AHA-39xx / AIC-7895 (rev 03)
0000:02:0b.1 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec AHA-2940U/UW / AHA-39xx / AIC-7895 (rev 03)
Base System Installation Checklist:
Initial boot worked: [O]
Configure network HW: [O]
Config network: [E]
Detect CD: [O]
Load installer modules: [O]
Detect hard drives: [O]
Partition hard drives: [E]
Create file systems: [O]
Mount partitions: [O]
Install base system: [O]
Install boot loader: [E]
Reboot: [O]
[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it
Comments/Problems:
DI correctly configured my network using DHCP but the system failed to keep
that configuration after reboot. I had to manually create the 'interfaces'
file in /etc/network to get my network connection up.
As noted above this installation used only LVM2 to manage system volumes.
There is no PC based partition table on the drive. To accomplish this, when
prompted to configure the partitions I switched to VT 2 and used the
console to run "pvcreate /dev/sda". I then tried to use the gui to create a
volume group on the drive. The gui did not recognize the physical volume I
had just created on the drive. So I returned to VT 2 to run
"vgcreate rakuen /dev/sda". 'rakuen' is the name of the system so I used it
for the volume group as well. If I recall correctly I still had problems in
the gui trying to create the logical volumes untill I ran "vgscan" on VT 2.
Once I did that the gui allowed me to create the logical volumes and format
and mount them. I think the wording was a little odd during that part but
it was functional.
Once this was completed the rest of the install went smoothly untill grub
tried to install. DI automatically started installing grub. There was no
prompt before it was being downloaded. This made some trouble for me since I
had to use lilo and not grub. Apparently once the gui has installed the grub
package it won't remove it and lilo can't install as a result. I believe
that I ended up going to VT 2 and chrooting into the new install to remove
grub and install lilo. If we're going to offer to install lilo in the menu
then we shouldn't automatically start installing grub. Or we should offer an
obvious means of removing it if a user changes their mind.
Further comments:
There is room to support installations with root and boot on logical volumes
and the disk made into a physical volume for LVM2. This works perfectly with
lilo as the boot loader. I'm sure that grub could be patched to work with it
too. In the mean time we could just enable the user to use drives for
physical volumes when there are no partitions on them and the volume groups
tool should support this regardless. Also if a user has placed the /boot
files onto a logical volume, instead of informing that this isn't supported
we could instead inform that this is only supported with lilo as the boot
loader and then install lilo automatically instead of grub. These small
changes would have enabled me to complete my install as I wanted to in the
gui.
Reply to: