Sandy, Congratulations on the resurrection. Great work.
Going off topic here but I tried to reply directly to you but your mail server rejected the suse-linux-e address... No spam there! Question, where did you get a Knoppix 5.2 DVD and is it an English version? I have not been able to find anything since the 5.1.1 release in January. Google gives some references to a 5.2 DVD available via bittorrent which I can't use due to firewall issues. Would like to have that in my toolbox. Thanks Clint > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Sandy Drobic" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: opensuse@opensuse.org > Subject: [opensuse] 10.3 on an old server installed like a dream (nightmare > version) > Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 13:04:17 +0200 > > > This is the version where you wish you WERE dreaming or at least leave all > the mess behind you after exiting the cinema... > > The actors: > > - Fujitsu-Siemens Primergy 470 (Dual P3-800, Mylex Raidcontroller > (DAC960PRL) with Hardware RAID5 on three SCSI hdd, currently running with > Suse Linux 10.0, file system reiser 3) > > - OpenSUSE 10.3 DVD 32bit > > - one happy sysadmin who successfully tested that the installation dvd > recognised the raid and didn't scream any warnings up to the point where > the installation starts > > > Prologue: > The machine is rather old being from the last century, but as it is still > reliable and sufficient for the small environment, I would like to keep > it. I already decided to skip the installation of Opensuse 10.1 and 10.2 > as there were ominous warnings from gparted during the update praparation > and the installation crashed mostly during install anyway. > > So I was very happy, when Opensuse 10.3 didn't raise any fuss like > warnings "the partitions can not be changed, do you want to use them > unchanged?" or something like it. > > > Main story: > Overall I was rather impressed with the speed and ease of the upgrade. It > detected some unmaintained and non-upgradable packages which I expected > anyway. Some of the packages were not from the distro or even compiled > from source. > The actual package installation went without any problem, the sun was > shining, it was sunday and everything promised to turn into a great day. > > That was when the nightmare slowly started. At the end of the installation > the system is prepared for the first start of the new OS. Suddenly a > warning appeared "mkinitrd failed" (or something like that). The > installation procedure wasn't impressed though, and the countdown for the > automatic reboot began. 10..9..8..7..6.. > > My eyes that were glued to the screen resetted and I hit the stop button. > The countdown was stopped, phew. So, what to do now? No combination of > keys gave me a shell to intervene. > > Finally, with a glum premonition of approaching desaster, I allowed the > system to reboot, lit a few incense sticks and did a little voodoo dance > to invoke the gods of luck. It didn't work, the booting system didn't see > any disks, panicked and finally crashed. The nightmare had arrived and had > the previously happy sysadmin firmly in his grip. > > Was all data/configuration lost and had to be installed from backup? I > booted once again from the installation dvd, it seemed to recognise the > partition, so all data apparently wasn't lost. Then I tried to use the > rescue system to repair the boot configuration. The login prompt appeared > and I logged in as root. Well, at least I attempted to login. The only > reaction of the system was that it replied with a service error. So, no > login via rescue system. > > Then I tried to boot from dvd and run the installed system. That resulted > in a nice little crash but no usable shell. > > At that point I decided to take a timeout, eat something and think about > any further steps. > > Half an hour later I began to investigate in earnest, meaning I grabbed my > Knoppix 5.2 dvd to see in what state the partitions currently were. > Booting from the Knoppix dvd went without a hitch. It showed all > partitions on the raid, and I could mount them without any problem. The > worst of the nightmare slowly began to fade. > > /boot resided on its own partition, and I immediately saw that indeed no > initrd had been installed. > > So I installed 10.3 (minimal instalation) as a VM to get a working initrd. > Five minutes later I copied the initrd on my server and rebooted. > Lucky, the initrd was accepted, unfortunately it didn't find my raid. > > Okay, I thought, let's configure the initrd to include the necessary > modules. That was when I discovered that the minimal installation did not > have vi nor any other editor, not even less. Even a manual execution of > mkinitrd with the list of modules to include only gave a list of missing > modules errors. > > I scrapped the minimal installation and installed a standard KDE version > instead. 20 minutes later I had a working 10.3 in vmware with all the > niceties I was accustomed to. > > Once again I booted the Knoppix dvd and looked up the exact list of > required modules in /etc/sysconfig/kernel. This time the new initrd was > created without error message. I copied the new initrd to the server (with > an usb stick) and rebooted. > > Finally, the boot process showed my raid again, the installed system > continued the installation. Yatta! Happy little sysadmin is doing the > victory dance! The nightmare was over! > > Or so I thought at least. When I began to check the various server > installations on the system I quickly noticed that the logfiles showed no > events after the reboot. What the heck is going on here? What use is a > server installation without the means to debug the services? > > A restart of the syslog server only gave back that /var/run/syslogd.pid > was empty and the service had started. Of course it didn't start. :-/ > > Then I recalled that the newer versions of Opensuse had a new security > feature: AppArmor. So I deactivated Apparmor and rebooted the entire > system. And finally the logfiles were showing events again, also this > little message appeared: > > type=APPARMOR_DENIED msg=audit(1191788249.506:39): type=1503 > operation="file_lock" requested_mask="k" denied_mask="k" > name="/var/run/syslogd.pid" pid=8055 profile="/sbin/syslogd" > > Great, AppArmor hits again. :-(( > > So finally the real work could start. I will look into apparmor when I've > got time (translation: next year earliest). > > > Epilogue > > The rest was business as usual after an upgrade: Apache2 didn't start > because a php.ini value in a vhost config wasn't allowed. MySQL didn't > start because of failed dependencies, apcupsd didn't work, the > policyserver had to be reinstalled, Squirrelmail wasnt installed yadda > yadda yadda. > > Well, that is to be expected after an upgrade of a system with source > packages and a leap from 10.0 to 10.3. But that only took about two hours > to reinstall and debug those problems. > > All in all about 7-8 hours of downtime before the system was up again and > the most important services were running. A lot of time for a system update. > > At least the installation didn't ruined the file system with all the data. > Still, it provided me with some blood pressure elevation for some hours. > > I can only recommend to have a Knoppix dvd present and better yet a test > installation on a less important system before you jump on the band wagon > of 10.3. It seems as if some raid controllers are still not correctly > supported by newer Opensuse installers, even though they are working > beautifully in older versions. > > -- > Sandy > > List replies only please! > Please address PMs to: news-reply2 (@) japantest (.) homelinux (.) com > -- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
