[opensuse-autoinstall] openSUSE11.2: resize existing & create new partitions

1 Feb 2010

      Hi all!

Having a lot of notebooks with existing Windows installation on which I have
to install openSUSE 11.2, I have tried to resize the Windows partition
automatically with autoyast before creating the linux partitions.

Is this possible? Using the following doesn't work and y2log doesn't really
answer my question why:

        <partitions config:type="list">

          <!-- keep "Dell Utility", FAT  -->

          <partition>
            <partition_nr config:type="integer">1</partition_nr>
            <create config:type="boolean">false</create>
            <format config:type="boolean">false</format>
          </partition>

          <!-- keep "Recovery", NTFS  -->

          <partition>
            <partition_nr config:type="integer">2</partition_nr>
            <create config:type="boolean">false</create>
            <format config:type="boolean">false</format>
          </partition>

          <!-- resize "Windows 7", NTFS -->

          <partition>
            <partition_nr config:type="integer">3</partition_nr>
            <create config:type="boolean">false</create>
            <format config:type="boolean">false</format>
            <resize config:type="boolean">true</resize>
            <size>72GB</size>
          </partition>

          <!-- new logical partions in extended partition (system) -->

          <partition>
            <partition_nr config:type="integer">5</partition_nr>
            <partition_id config:type="integer">131</partition_id>
            <create config:type="boolean">true</create>
            <format config:type="boolean">true</format>
            <crypt_fs config:type="boolean">false</crypt_fs>
            <filesystem config:type="symbol">ext4</filesystem>
            <mountby config:type="device">id</mountby>
            <mount>/home</mount>
            <size>80GB</size>
          </partition>

          <partition>
            <partition_nr config:type="integer">6</partition_nr>
            <partition_id config:type="integer">130</partition_id>
            <create config:type="boolean">true</create>
            <format config:type="boolean">true</format>
            <crypt_fs config:type="boolean">false</crypt_fs>
            <filesystem config:type="symbol">swap</filesystem>
            <mountby config:type="device">id</mountby>
            <mount>swap</mount>
            <size>4GB</size>
          </partition>

          <partition>
            <partition_nr config:type="integer">7</partition_nr>
            <partition_id config:type="integer">131</partition_id>
            <create config:type="boolean">true</create>
            <format config:type="boolean">true</format>
            <crypt_fs config:type="boolean">false</crypt_fs>
            <filesystem config:type="symbol">ext4</filesystem>
            <mountby config:type="device">id</mountby>
            <mount>/</mount>
            <size>max</size>
          </partition>

        </partitions>
      </drive>
    </partitioning>

Using olny the first part works, although I thought, autoyast would complain
about the missing linux partition. But it works, at least until starting the
real installation:

        <partitions config:type="list">

          <!-- keep "Dell Utility", FAT  -->

          <partition>
            <partition_nr config:type="integer">1</partition_nr>
            <create config:type="boolean">false</create>
            <format config:type="boolean">false</format>
          </partition>

          <!-- keep "Recovery", NTFS  -->

          <partition>
            <partition_nr config:type="integer">2</partition_nr>
            <create config:type="boolean">false</create>
            <format config:type="boolean">false</format>
          </partition>

          <!-- resize "Windows 7", NTFS -->

          <partition>
            <partition_nr config:type="integer">3</partition_nr>
            <create config:type="boolean">false</create>
            <format config:type="boolean">false</format>
            <resize config:type="boolean">true</resize>
            <size>72GB</size>
          </partition>

        </partitions>
      </drive>
    </partitioning>

As soon as I add an additional partition, which uses the new diskspace,
won by resizing the existing Windows 7 partition, the whole installations
stops with an error. Even if I only ad one partition of the three given
above.

Any idea?

Next idea was, that I could only have the resizing part in the autoyast 
config,
then manually add the linux partitions before starting the real installation
and after that checking /var/adm/autoinstall/cache/installedSystem.xml
so see, what I have to enter in my autoyast config. But this doesn't work.
There, I can only find what already was given in the configuration, not what
I changed later manually. So it's not really the config of the 
"installedSystem".
:-(

Regards,
-- 
Guenther Haas, Uni Ulm, Institut TAIT, guenther.haas@gmx.de