Installing SuSE 9 from SuSE 9
Greetings - I just unpacked a dual opteron storage server with a 3ware 7000-series RAID controller and two sets of three SATA drives. SuSE 9 is installed on /dev/sda2, a 500GB file system. The technicians at Monarch computers adviced me to install the OS on a different drive. (One problem they had is that 3ware hasn't released a controller card driver for SuSE 9 yet.) I've added an IDE drive for this purpose, to free up the RAID 5 drives for storage. I'm new to this and have two questions. First, will I get a big performance hit on the OS by moving it from the SATA RAID drives to a single IDE drive? There is 2GB RAM. Second, can I install SuSE 9 from loop-mounted DVD disk images, or in some other way directly from hard drives within the existing installation? I don't have a floppy or CD/DVD drive on this unit, though I could plug one in for this purpose. Cheers, David P.S. Minor issues in case someone has a quick answer: How can I boot directly into a text console and not into SuSE's graphics console (I set it to boot to run level 3)? How can I increase the font size at boot? Finally, the kernel isn't supporting my flat screen display -- the text is squashed and unreadable. An old CRT works. (VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage XL (rev 27))
Amd64 is reportedly good for video transcoding. Are packages of transcode and libxvidcore4 available as SuSE rpms? Is the apt rpm available for the x86_64 platform? I feel a bit silly asking on this list; where would be a better place to find this information? Cheers, David
http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/ <-- The guide http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/ <-- The repository I have installed this and it works but often there is only 32bit-versions of whatever. (i386-i686) Another thing is that Yast wont play correctly after using "apt". So manual runnings of Yast-parts are "my only way". Good luck :-)
Helle David, On Sat, 14 Feb 2004, David Liontooth wrote:
Second, can I install SuSE 9 from loop-mounted DVD disk images, or in some other way directly from hard drives within the existing installation? I don't have a floppy or CD/DVD drive on this unit, though I could plug one in for this purpose.
On my Shuttle AMD64 Board AN5OR I did create a separate partition /dev/hde11 and mounts this to directory /local. Then I did copy the the two DVD's to a local partition directory on my SATA harddisk, for instance: /local/install/SuSE_90/DVD1 and .../DVD2. The starting point for installation is then the mounted partition /dev/hde11 on directory /local with directory (absolute path) /local/install/SuSE_90/DVD1 and not the CDROM device. You can copy the DVD's via network connection from another computer. Then you can install always again and again from harddisk directly. This partition you can mount as installation source from any running SuSE-System. The next is to configure the booting maschine for the first setup from harddisk and not CDROM, DVD or floppy. My idea is, than they can edit a additional entry in existing GRUB installation on harddisk. I think, you can add following lines in /boot/grub/menu.lst if booting device is /dev/hde13. ## ----------------------------- title Installation (initial from harddisk) kernel (hd0,12)/linux ramdisk_size=65536 splash=silent manual=1 showopts initrd (hd0,12)/initrd ## ----------------------------- Please see SuSE Admin handbook.
On Sat, 14 Feb 2004, David Liontooth wrote:
I just unpacked a dual opteron storage server with a 3ware 7000-series RAID controller and two sets of three SATA drives. SuSE 9 is installed on /dev/sda2, a 500GB file system. The technicians at Monarch computers adviced me to install the OS on a different drive. (One problem they had is that 3ware hasn't released a controller card driver for SuSE 9 yet.)
Well, the wonderful people at SuSE have included it anyway. It's also a very easy compile, I did the latest version for a Dual Opteron with SLES 8 without having to work for it.
I've added an IDE drive for this purpose, to free up the RAID 5 drives for storage.
Probably a good plan anyway. SCSI for the OS would be better, but it should be fine.
First, will I get a big performance hit on the OS by moving it from the SATA RAID drives to a single IDE drive? There is 2GB RAM.
That really depends on how you use it. I'm assuming this is a processing (number-crunching?) resource. If your applications mainly do their writes to the Raid and not to scratch-areas, tmp-areas or the swap memory area, then you're ok. If you run a large number of parallel writing processes your in trouble anyway, whether writing to the Raid or the OS disk - it's all IDE.
Second, can I install SuSE 9 from loop-mounted DVD disk images, or in some other way directly from hard drives within the existing installation? I don't have a floppy or CD/DVD drive on this unit, though I could plug one in for this purpose.
Just copy it to a local partition, but here you _really_ want a simple disk, not the Raid. For more info, have a look at the "Installation server" part of the AutoYaST documentation: http://www.suse.de/~nashif/autoinstall/9.0/html/x1091.html
How can I boot directly into a text console and not into SuSE's graphics console (I set it to boot to run level 3)? How can I increase the font size at boot?
Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst - vga=normal always makes me happy. Removing all "splash=" options is good, too.
Finally, the kernel isn't supporting my flat screen display -- the text is squashed and unreadable. An old CRT works. (VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage XL (rev 27))
What type of LCD monitor is it? Do you have the specs? Bjørn -- Bjørn Tore Sund Phone: (+47) 555-84894 Stupidity is like a System administrator Fax: (+47) 555-89672 fractal; universal and Math. Department Mobile: (+47) 918 68075 infinitely repetitive. University of Bergen VIP: 81724 teknisk@mi.uib.no Email: bjornts@mi.uib.no http://www.mi.uib.no/
Hello David! Excuse me, I'm wrong. After testing I can offer running result. On Sun, 15 Feb 2004, Lothar Hansche wrote:
Hello David,
On Sat, 14 Feb 2004, David Liontooth wrote:
Second, can I install SuSE 9 from loop-mounted DVD disk images, or in some other way directly from hard drives within the existing installation? I don't have a floppy or CD/DVD drive on this unit, though I could plug one in for this purpose.
On my Shuttle AMD64 Board AN5OR I did create a separate partition /dev/hde11 and mounts this to directory /local.
Then I did copy the the two DVD's to a local partition directory on my SATA harddisk, for instance: /local/install/SuSE_90/DVD1 and .../DVD2. The starting point for installation is then the mounted partition /dev/hde11 on directory /local with directory (absolute path)
/local/install/SuSE_90/DVD1
and not the CDROM device. You can copy the DVD's via network connection from another computer.
Then you can install always again and again from harddisk directly.
This partition you can mount as installation source from any running SuSE-System.
The next is to configure the booting maschine for the first setup from harddisk and not CDROM, DVD or floppy.
My idea is, than they can edit a additional entry in existing GRUB installation on harddisk.
I think, you can add following lines in /boot/grub/menu.lst if booting device is /dev/hde13.
The booting device is /dev/hde11 (/local).
## ----------------------------- title Installation (initial from harddisk) kernel (hd0,12)/linux ramdisk_size=65536 splash=silent manual=1 showopts initrd (hd0,12)/initrd ## -----------------------------
I forgot the path's, but following works for my maschine: ## ------------------------------- title Installation (initial from harddisk) kernel (hd0,10)/install/SuSE_90/DVD1/boot/loader/linux ramdisk_size=65536 splash=silent manual=1 showopts initrd (hd0,10)/install/SuSE_90/DVD1/boot/loader/initrd ## ------------------------------- The installation path is then "install/SuSE_90/DVD1". Additional can you start the rescue system if you create a new entry and then replace the option manual=1 through rescue=1.
Please see SuSE Admin handbook.
Gruss Lothar Hansche, Germany, Berlin
On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 18:37:44 -0800
David Liontooth
How can I boot directly into a text console and not into SuSE's graphics console (I set it to boot to run level 3)? How can I increase the font size at boot?
Finally, the kernel isn't supporting my flat screen display -- the text is squashed and unreadable. An old CRT works. (VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage XL (rev 27))
Remove the vga=... setting in /boot/grub/menu.lst. This will give you a standard 80x25 VGA text mode console. -Andi
On February 15, 2004 02:36 am, Robert Breman wrote:
http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/ <-- The guide http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/ <-- The repository
I have installed this and it works but often there is only 32bit-versions of whatever. (i386-i686)
I personally just recompiled the source rpm(there were some minor problems, but I don't remember which), as well as took a version of aptitude patched to use rpm from Mandrake - I am very happy now :) Btw, 32bit versions seem to only recognize 32bit packages...(recompiled apt sees both)
Another thing is that Yast wont play correctly after using "apt". So manual runnings of Yast-parts are "my only way".
It seems to work fine for me...Though I see no reason using it now :) Perhaps you're trying to run both at the same time?? Oh, and you'll probably need to either get rid of OpenOffice or install java from 32bit SuSE not to be annoyed by the dependencies. P.S. I'm not sure about transcode, but I do have mplayer/mencoder compiled, although without win32 dll support...
Thanks! Now what about my other question -- how to move a 9.0 installation from RAID5 to IDE? Lothar Hansche very helpfully provided the tested recipe for reinstalling from loop-mounted DVDs. Could I also just dd the current installation over to the new partition? Something along the lines of dd if=/dev/sda2 of=/dev/hda1 Now the problem of course is that /dev/sda2 is far larger (500GB) than /dev/hda1 (10GB). Any way around this? I imagine I can't just use cp or mv as it won't handle the device nodes correctly? Cheers, David Andi Kleen wrote:
On Sat, 14 Feb 2004 18:37:44 -0800 David Liontooth
wrote: How can I boot directly into a text console and not into SuSE's graphics console (I set it to boot to run level 3)? How can I increase the font size at boot?
Finally, the kernel isn't supporting my flat screen display -- the text is squashed and unreadable. An old CRT works. (VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage XL (rev 27))
Remove the vga=... setting in /boot/grub/menu.lst. This will give you a standard 80x25 VGA text mode console.
-Andi
Thanks Bjørn, This was extremely helpful (I haven't trained thunderbird to this list yet, so I almost lost it in the spam folder). The installation server method looks good -- but could I also just copy the current installation, bit by bit, from the RAID5 to the IDE partition? I'd rather not reinstall if I don't have to. Cheers, David Bjorn Tore Sund wrote:
On Sat, 14 Feb 2004, David Liontooth wrote:
I just unpacked a dual opteron storage server with a 3ware 7000-series RAID controller and two sets of three SATA drives. SuSE 9 is installed on /dev/sda2, a 500GB file system. The technicians at Monarch computers adviced me to install the OS on a different drive. (One problem they had is that 3ware hasn't released a controller card driver for SuSE 9 yet.)
Well, the wonderful people at SuSE have included it anyway. It's also a very easy compile, I did the latest version for a Dual Opteron with SLES 8 without having to work for it.
I've added an IDE drive for this purpose, to free up the RAID 5 drives for storage.
Probably a good plan anyway. SCSI for the OS would be better, but it should be fine.
First, will I get a big performance hit on the OS by moving it from the SATA RAID drives to a single IDE drive? There is 2GB RAM.
That really depends on how you use it. I'm assuming this is a processing (number-crunching?) resource. If your applications mainly do their writes to the Raid and not to scratch-areas, tmp-areas or the swap memory area, then you're ok. If you run a large number of parallel writing processes your in trouble anyway, whether writing to the Raid or the OS disk - it's all IDE.
Second, can I install SuSE 9 from loop-mounted DVD disk images, or in some other way directly from hard drives within the existing installation? I don't have a floppy or CD/DVD drive on this unit, though I could plug one in for this purpose.
Just copy it to a local partition, but here you _really_ want a simple disk, not the Raid. For more info, have a look at the "Installation server" part of the AutoYaST documentation:
http://www.suse.de/~nashif/autoinstall/9.0/html/x1091.html
How can I boot directly into a text console and not into SuSE's graphics console (I set it to boot to run level 3)? How can I increase the font size at boot?
Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst - vga=normal always makes me happy. Removing all "splash=" options is good, too.
Finally, the kernel isn't supporting my flat screen display -- the text is squashed and unreadable. An old CRT works. (VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage XL (rev 27))
What type of LCD monitor is it? Do you have the specs?
Bjørn
Quick followup -- I googled and found instructions to use this: cd / ; find . -xdev | cpio -vdump /mnt/newroot Cool! That copied the files and the device points with no problems, afaics: Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda2 487292800 4038308 483254492 1% / /dev/hda1 9614116 4374152 4751592 48% /mnt/newroot For some reason, the target partition shows about 350MB more than the source -- ? (Yes, it was empty when I started.) I now have to figure out grub -- I'll have to rewrite the MBR and forget how. Cheers, David
Greetings -- I just moved my SuSE 9 from a RAID volume to an IDE drive, using cp -a as Andrew adviced; this worked fine. I modified /boot/grub/menu.lst to load the new IDE /boot and /root partitions. So far so good -- everything is working fine. Then the anomaly: I boot into the original RAID volume and issue grub-install /dev/hda I get this receipt: (fd0) /dev/fd0 (hd0) /dev/hda (hd1) /dev/hdc (hd2) /dev/sda (hd3) /dev/sdb Then I boot into the new IDE drive and issue the same "grub-install /dev/hda" and get the same values (except no floppy): (hd0) /dev/hda (hd1) /dev/hdc (hd2) /dev/sda (hd3) /dev/sdb I edit menu.lst to reflect these values and reboot. Misery: grub doesn't find the menu, and boots into the grub shell. I query, geometry (hd0) and get the first RAID volume. The values are in effect as follows: (hd0) /dev/sda (hd1) /dev/sdb (hd2) /dev/hda (hd3) /dev/hdc And grub sticks to its guns. There seems to be no way to convince it to change its device map, in spite of what it claims to be doing once the OS is booted. How can I overwrite the device map that grub actually uses? Issuing grub-install seems to just create device maps that are not used, and grub takes on multiple personalities. Cheers, David
On Sun, 2004-02-15 at 09:52, David Liontooth wrote:
Amd64 is reportedly good for video transcoding.
Are packages of transcode and libxvidcore4 available as SuSE rpms?
Is the apt rpm available for the x86_64 platform?
I feel a bit silly asking on this list; where would be a better place to find this information?
I don't know of a location for RPMs, but the latest transcode version compiles and works fine in 64 bit mode. A problem however is that you can't use the win32 codecs... BB
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi David: Um, I'm sure you already checked this but just in case: your BIOS couldn't still be booting from the RAID, could it? If so, then GRUB is looking at the /boot/grub stuff on the RAID rather than what's on your new IDE boot drive... Cheers, - Darrell On Monday 16 February 2004 00:02, David Liontooth wrote:
Greetings --
I just moved my SuSE 9 from a RAID volume to an IDE drive, using cp -a as Andrew adviced; this worked fine.
I modified /boot/grub/menu.lst to load the new IDE /boot and /root partitions. So far so good -- everything is working fine.
Then the anomaly: I boot into the original RAID volume and issue
grub-install /dev/hda
I get this receipt:
(fd0) /dev/fd0 (hd0) /dev/hda (hd1) /dev/hdc (hd2) /dev/sda (hd3) /dev/sdb
Then I boot into the new IDE drive and issue the same "grub-install /dev/hda" and get the same values (except no floppy):
(hd0) /dev/hda (hd1) /dev/hdc (hd2) /dev/sda (hd3) /dev/sdb
I edit menu.lst to reflect these values and reboot.
Misery: grub doesn't find the menu, and boots into the grub shell. I query,
geometry (hd0)
and get the first RAID volume. The values are in effect as follows:
(hd0) /dev/sda (hd1) /dev/sdb (hd2) /dev/hda (hd3) /dev/hdc
And grub sticks to its guns. There seems to be no way to convince it to change its device map, in spite of what it claims to be doing once the OS is booted.
How can I overwrite the device map that grub actually uses? Issuing grub-install seems to just create device maps that are not used, and grub takes on multiple personalities.
Cheers, David
- -- sused@mucus.com "Perfect! ....what am I doing?" -- Washu -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFAMQuheo6c0kw6mZ0RAnaFAKDwT77OZCMugTLJsHW7WB3Rl4kzYACeKdyB IJbefR0Rt0vVJVx34fVQd6Y= =4D3f -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Darrell Shively wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Hi David:
Um, I'm sure you already checked this but just in case: your BIOS couldn't still be booting from the RAID, could it? If so, then GRUB is looking at the /boot/grub stuff on the RAID rather than what's on your new IDE boot drive...
Cheers, - Darrell
Hi Darrell, I don't know about booting the BIOS from the RAID, but you're close: grub was reading the BIOS values that had been established at the initial installation, and the BIOS didn't see the new IDE hard drives as boot drives (although it saw them as IDE drives). For unrelated reasons, I reset the CMOS, and the drives reordered, with the IDE drives first. Everything is working. I think grub has a workaround that Andrew Halliwell pointed out is used in lilo -- you can remap the drives. I noticed this in the grub shell and didn't see the point of it, but I guess I do now. Messing with MBRs and boot problems used to give me sleepless nights (literally). The stuff that nightmares are made of -- gives me the creeps! Cheers, David
participants (8)
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Andi Kleen
-
Bjorn Tore Sund
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Bodo Bauer
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Darrell Shively
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David Liontooth
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Lothar Hansche
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Robert Breman
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Sergei Klink