Feature changed by: Arvin Schnell (aschnell) Feature #303809, revision 18 Title: Partitioner: allow cloning of disk layouts - was: easier creation of RAID 1 openSUSE-11.1: Rejected by Matthias Eckermann (mge1512) reject date: 2008-07-30 16:50:50 reject reason: Moving to SLE 11 SP 1 / openSUSE 11.2 Priority Requester: Important Projectmanager: Important openSUSE-11.2: Evaluation Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Matthias Eckermann (mge1512) Description: Proposal is to offer an option in YaST to clone a disk layout for RAID use and probably jump into the RAID-creation-mode directly Below the original request from C. Boltz / openSUSE community: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It would be good to have an easier way to setup a raid 1 (mirroring). Currently you have to: * create partitions on first disk * create partitions on the second disk (usually using the same layout). * put the corresponding partitions (sda1+sdb1, sda2+sdb2, ...) into a raid array. The easier way would be * [x] I want to create a raid 1 * define the partitioning once for both disks YaST should then partition both disks as requested and create the raid volumes This would save the user/admin some time. However, the traditional method should still be available in case someone wants to have a different layout for some partitions for whatever reason. Relations: - Partitioner: allow cloning of disk layouts - was: easier creation of RAID 1 (novell/bugzilla/id: 387373) https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=387373 Discussion: #2: Matthias Eckermann (mge1512) (2008-05-06 20:10:22) Thanks for the proposal. I am happy that there are more people out there sharing my problems:-) Yet, looking at the current "model" we have in mind for partitioner enhancements, I wonder, if we could probably make that more "generic" by adding something like a "clone disk partitioning scheme" button: You would partition hd0 first and then say: please clone this to hd1, hd2, ... and be able to adjust settings on hd1, ... later. Would that fit? so long - MgE #3: Christian Boltz (cboltz) (2008-05-08 05:07:14) Cloning the disk layout sounds like a good idea and would help. To make it more useful for RAID creation, add "clone to md*", maybe combined with a selection dialog to choose the disks to use. #4: Matthias Eckermann (mge1512) (2008-05-08 05:26:16) Well, you know, we indeed are planning to have such a dialog for creation of raids in the future, ...:-) I changed the "title" according to our discussion, and will 1transfer the request into our internal Feature tracking system soon. Thanks! so long - MgE #6: Martin Schmidkunz (mschmidkunz) (2008-05-15 11:37:58) AFAIK it is currently possible to create one partition after the other. So it does not make sense for me to have a "Clone this partition for future use" at the end. Instead I thought of: http://en.opensuse.org/Image:Idea_303809_1.png When the user presses "Add" in the "partitioning" tab he can choose whether to create one new partition or to use the whole partition scheme from another physical harddisk. Does that make sense? #7: Matthias Eckermann (mge1512) (2008-05-15 12:05:53) (reply to #6) Well, no:-( We are not asking for _partition_ cloning, but _disk_ cloning, i.e. if you have several harddisks, and you want to copy the partitioning from sda to sdb or the like. #8: Martin Schmidkunz (mschmidkunz) (2008-05-16 10:01:41) As discussed live with mge we agree on my proposal. #9: Arvin Schnell (aschnell) (2008-05-16 10:33:01) (reply to #8) That approach has some problems: 1) Hiding "Cloning" behind "Add Partition" is incomprehensible. Cloning affect the whole disk, adding a partition not really. 2) The step to select the partition type is omitted if only one type of partition can be selected. 3) The complete workflow of adding a partition is omitted when no partitions can be created. We (mge, mschmidkunz and aschnell) now agreed upon adding an entry to the "expert" menubutton in the partition overview. + #16: Arvin Schnell (aschnell) (2009-02-04 11:08:08) + Summarising the request: + Add a entry "Close disk layout" to the "Expert" button in the disk + view. This opens a dialog showing all disks that are suitable for being + a clone (constraints: new disks must have equal or larger size). + Several disks can be selected. + On the selected disks: Delete everything (including RAIDs and LVMs + somehow using that disk), create new partition table (if different from + existing) and create partitions with same start and sizes (in cylinders + as libstorage calculates internally) and partition IDs. Other + parameters, e.g. filesystem, are not copied. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/303809