SLES9: Reread of partition table failed
I've got fully automated SLES9 installations almost working with our software (we provide a virtualized system, with virtual network and virtual disk). The only problem I've yet to solve is that the install pauses halfway through with the above error, making the user press ok to continue. When you do press ok, the install works fine, and the right partitions are set up and installed. Well, ok, that's not the only problem, but the others (network config not getting setup even though specified in the xml, and inittab trying to run getty's on tty1-6 even though its a serial port install) I think are solvable. This one however.. Looking at the yast2-storage source, it appears it's searching the fdisk output for WARNING (which fdisk prints out if the BLKRRPART ioctl fails). however, if i run fdisk manually on the system, and set up the partitions exactly the same way, I don't see that error. I've even gone so far as to mount the root install image via loopback/chroot and run that version of fdisk, and i still don't see that error message. So I don't know why yast, which seems to be reading the output of fdisk(?) would fail and trigger this dialog. Also, looking at the <report> section of my xml file, I see that errors, messages, and warnings are all set to timeout in 10 seconds. Why does this message not time out? Any thoughts? I'm including the partition section of the XML below my sig if it helps. Checking the archives it looks like something like this has happened before, but it seems it should have been solved years ago. I'm guessing I'm doing something wrong.. john.c - -- John Clemens jclemens@virtualiron.com <partitioning config:type="list"> <drive> <device>/dev/sda</device> <initialize config:type="boolean">true</initialize> <partitions config:type="list"> <partition> <crypt>twofish256</crypt> <filesystem config:type="symbol">reiser</filesystem> <format config:type="boolean">true</format> <loop_fs config:type="boolean">false</loop_fs> <mount>/</mount> <partition_id config:type="integer">131</partition_id> <partition_type>primary</partition_type> <size>4.3GB</size> </partition> <partition> <crypt>twofish256</crypt> <format config:type="boolean">false</format> <loop_fs config:type="boolean">false</loop_fs> <partition_id config:type="integer">131</partition_id> <partition_type>primary</partition_type> <size>4.3GB</size> </partition> <partition> <crypt>twofish256</crypt> <format config:type="boolean">false</format> <loop_fs config:type="boolean">false</loop_fs> <partition_id config:type="integer">131</partition_id> <partition_type>primary</partition_type> <size>4.3GB</size> </partition> <partition> <crypt>twofish256</crypt> <format config:type="boolean">false</format> <loop_fs config:type="boolean">false</loop_fs> <partition_id config:type="integer">130</partition_id> <partition_type>primary</partition_type> <size>max</size> </partition> </partitions> <use>1,4</use> </drive> </partitioning>
On Wednesday 17 August 2005 16:46, John Clemens wrote:
The only problem I've yet to solve is that the install pauses halfway through with the above error, making the user press ok to
I've never seen that error or heard of it until now.
<partitioning config:type="list"> <drive> <device>/dev/sda</device> <initialize config:type="boolean">true</initialize>
you can try to set <initialize ...>false</initialize> or do you really need it?
<use>1,4</use>
why is that? -- ciao, Uwe Gansert Uwe Gansert, Server Technologies Team SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstrasse 5, D-90409 Nürnberg, Germany e-mail: uwe.gansert@suse.de, Tel: +49-(0)911-74053-0, Fax: +49-(0)911-74053-476, Web: http://www.suse.de
On Wed, 17 Aug 2005, Uwe Gansert wrote:
On Wednesday 17 August 2005 16:46, John Clemens wrote:
The only problem I've yet to solve is that the install pauses halfway through with the above error, making the user press ok to
I've never seen that error or heard of it until now.
Thanks for responding..
<partitioning config:type="list"> <drive> <device>/dev/sda</device> <initialize config:type="boolean">true</initialize>
you can try to set <initialize ...>false</initialize> or do you really need it?
Err, I assumed initialize meant wipe the partition table and start from scratch.. I'll go back to the documentation and see what it really does.. http://www.suse.de/~nashif/autoinstallation/9.1/html/CreateProfile.Partition... doesn't seem to mention it. what exactly does it do? It was a checkbox in the yast autoinstall program i used to create the file. After trying it, it didn't give the reread failure, which is a nice step forward; but it did give me a timed out error message saying "error, partitions are not contiguous". and then another one claiming there was an error setting up the partitions, and the dumped me back to the linuxrc menu.
<use>1,4</use>
why is that?
local convention.. in our test environment we have OS's on partition 1-3 and swap on partition 4. so I want to tell SLES to use partition 1 for the OS, and 4 for swap, and ignore the part 2 and 3. maybe that's causing the above problem. Let me try a few things now that I'm getting further. Thanks for the help. john.c
Ok, it appears that I don't get the error if i don't use initialize. However, there appears to be a problem using 'primary' partitions if you don't use initialize.. I simplified my partition section to be something very simple and then worked my way back up to what I wanted. For reference, the original partition section was what YaST2's autoinst creation program gave me. This seems to work ok.. i then modified it to use primary partitions and that also seemed to work after a bit of fiddling.. <use>all</use> also seems to have helped things quite a bit. So what exactly does 'initialize' do and when should it be used? For future reference, the new (working) xml section is included below sig... Thank you (both) for the help. john.c - -- John Clemens jclemens@virtualiron.com <partitioning config:type="list"> <drive> <device>/dev/sda</device> <initialize config:type="boolean">false</initialize> <use>all</use> <partitions config:type="list"> <partition> <filesystem config:type="symbol">reiser</filesystem> <format config:type="boolean">true</format> <partition_type>primary</partition_type> <partition_id config:type="integer">131</partition_id> <mount>/</mount> <size>4GB</size> </partition> <partition> <filesystem config:type="symbol">reiser</filesystem> <format config:type="boolean">true</format> <partition_type>primary</partition_type> <partition_id config:type="integer">131</partition_id> <mount>/disk1</mount> <size>4GB</size> </partition> <partition> <filesystem config:type="symbol">reiser</filesystem> <format config:type="boolean">true</format> <partition_type>primary</partition_type> <partition_id config:type="integer">131</partition_id> <mount>/disk2</mount> <size>4GB</size> </partition> <partition> <filesystem config:type="symbol">swap</filesystem> <format config:type="boolean">true</format> <partition_type>primary</partition_type> <partition_id config:type="integer">130</partition_id> <mount>swap</mount> <size>max</size> </partition> </partitions> </drive> </partitioning>
On Wednesday 17 August 2005 19:27, John Clemens wrote:
So what exactly does 'initialize' do
You alread got that right, it's doing what you already expect. It wipes out the partition table, so that you start from scratch.
and when should it be used?
that's a good question John. I don't really see a reason for using that. In your case I just had the suspicion that it leads to trouble to clear the partition table and reread it and that's why I recommended to turn initialize off. It was just a guess, you actually did nothing wrong in using initialize. For example, I never had problems in using the initialize by myself. -- ciao, Uwe Gansert Uwe Gansert, Server Technologies Team SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstrasse 5, D-90409 Nürnberg, Germany e-mail: uwe.gansert@suse.de, Tel: +49-(0)911-74053-0, Fax: +49-(0)911-74053-476, Web: http://www.suse.de
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