Bug#405484: Working path to install Etch
I managed to get to a fully working Debian Etch AMD64 system on fakeraid
for RAID 1 on a Dell XPS 700 with root and swap in LVM, using the Etch
RC1 installer as a starting point. There are several bugs that will
need fixed. A quick summary of the bugs, then details of the install (I
assume some of these are already filed in the BTS):
- update-grub is coded to always add 'savedefault' lines, but this
causes an "error 15" bug with grub at boot time when booting off
fakeraid[1]. I'd say this would be a bug to fix in grub, but if that's
problematic it could also be an ugly hack to upgrade-grub to make the
line conditional on the menu.lst options.
- The dm-mod module needs loaded by Etch's installer.
- The dmraid udebs (which depend on libselinux/libsepol non-udebs?) need
to be loaded by Etch's installer and dmraid -ay run to create the devices.
- dmraid will need installed in /target with /sys mounted so it can be
added to the initrd stuff.
- The bootloader install portion of Etch's installer needs to handle the
fakeraid situation - will currently avoid attempting to install grub
(since it thinks /boot's on LVM), then fail and complain about not being
able to install lilo, either.
- The partitioner considers the dmraid mapped devices LVM. It also
seems to forget the previous configuration of the device after setting
up actual LVM.
[1]
http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&q=grub+%22error+15%22+savedefault&btnG=Google+Search
So here's the basic method I went through:
- Let the install run up to the partman step.
- modprobed dm-mod
- Installed the dmraid udeb's dependencies, libselinux and libsepol
(udpkg -i off of /cdrom, ignoring the errors produced), and the dmraid
udeb itself.
- dmraid -ay to detect
- went back to the partitioner's VT, went 'back' then returned to
partitioning to get it to rescan and notice the devices, which it
thought were LVM as already discussed.
- Configured an ext3 /boot on one (since grub can't deal with /boot in
LVM), LVM on another, configured LVM adding the PV/VG and a LV for root
and one for swap. The partitioner had seemingly forgotten my /boot
configuration on the other, so re-did it.
- Skipped over the failing lilo, let it finish and eject the CD, flipped
over to VT2 to finish the install by hand.
- Unmounted /boot, chrooted into /target, mounted /boot under that so
it'd be aware of it, mounted /sys (required for dmraid's postinst not to
fail) and /proc.
- Installed dmraid and grub, dmraid -ay.
- Did an upgrade-grub to get an initial menu.lst.
- Did the grub install manually as grub-install always whines about BIOS
drives - copied the stage1/stage2/stage1.5 stuff into /boot/grub, edited
devices.map so instead of hd0 and hd1 being sda and sdb, had it as (hd0)
/dev/mapper/nvidia_foo. Ran grub, did the root (hd0,X), setup (hd0)
stuff, updated the groot in the menu.lst for my /boot partition and
re-ran update-grub.
- Removed the 'savedefault' lines produced by update-grub from menu.lst
as they'll cause grub to report "error 15" and fail when hitting it when
booting off of fakeraid for some reason. There's a warning in menu.lst
about using the 'saved' option in conjunction with dmraid, so it's
already known this feature doesn't work right.
- Rebooted into Etch.
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