Bug#344065: evms: integrate EVMS with debian-installer
On Fri, Dec 30, 2005 at 01:59:50AM +0100, Steinar H. Gunderson wrote: On Thu, Dec 29, 2005 at 04:58:23PM -0800, Ross Boylan wrote: ... The EVMS site lists a number of patches to get all the features working, even with a 2.6 kernel (in particular snapshot and bad block relocation). Are these in the default Debian kernels? You can do snapshots just fine. BBR needs a patched kernel, but hey -- do you really need to build those in the installation? I wasn't thinking too clearly about the distinction between features in the kernel and on the disk, nor install time vs later. I agree that snapshots seem like an easy feature to live without during install. Are you saying the relevant patch is in Debian kernels anyway? However, BBR seems trickier. While it used to be a feature, it is now only available as a segment manager to attach to a disk. So it seems to me that if it's not available at install you'll have to use some other segment manager, and will have no good way to change that later. My impression is that modern disks do BBR in hardware, so I'm not sure how important this facility is in practice. I was using it, but it may be redundant. There might be other options I ignored, like high availability or clustering, which also would need to be set up at initial install. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#344065: evms: integrate EVMS with debian-installer
On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 09:46:10PM -0800, Ross Boylan wrote: On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 10:32:01AM +0100, Steinar H. Gunderson wrote: On Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 11:07:37AM -0800, Ross Boylan wrote: ... I don't have a good sense of what's involved in making this happen, and it may be the installer team doesn't want the added complexity. The things that would be needed is: - Make sure the evms udeb works properly again (IIRC it's broken somehow, perhaps with regard to libraries or something). - Make a partman module for evms. This is definitely the most demanding task, and needs someone who's familiar with both evms and partman (which is a shell script of several thousand lines). Yikes! Perhaps a more do-able goal would be to make it possible for someone who wanted to setup using evms to shell out of the installer and do the partitioning via the evms tools, rather than the main installer script (which I take it is partman). This is more modest than the complete integration contemplated above, and less modest than the provide written instructions alternative I listed in an earlier e-mail. I'm going to be playing around with moving toward that intermediate goal by creating an appropriately evms enabled/patched kernel for the installer and a working evms udeb. Given that the initramfs tools are apparently a bit of a mess at the moment, and that I don't know much about this area, I may not get anywhere Ross -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#344065: evms: integrate EVMS with debian-installer
On Thu, Dec 29, 2005 at 03:50:21PM -0800, Ross Boylan wrote: Perhaps a more do-able goal would be to make it possible for someone who wanted to setup using evms to shell out of the installer and do the partitioning via the evms tools, rather than the main installer script (which I take it is partman). Sure, but you still need to teach partman that it can install to (but not boot from) EVMS devices. I'm going to be playing around with moving toward that intermediate goal by creating an appropriately evms enabled/patched kernel for the installer and a working evms udeb. Given that the initramfs tools are apparently a bit of a mess at the moment, and that I don't know much about this area, I may not get anywhere You don't need a special kernel these days. Just make sure the evms package is installed before the initramfs is generated, and it should be fine (to the degree that what we have today is fine -- expect this to get better over the coming month or so). /* Steinar */ -- Homepage: http://www.sesse.net/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#344065: evms: integrate EVMS with debian-installer
On Fri, Dec 30, 2005 at 01:12:59AM +0100, Steinar H. Gunderson wrote: On Thu, Dec 29, 2005 at 03:50:21PM -0800, Ross Boylan wrote: Perhaps a more do-able goal would be to make it possible for someone who wanted to setup using evms to shell out of the installer and do the partitioning via the evms tools, rather than the main installer script (which I take it is partman). Sure, but you still need to teach partman that it can install to (but not boot from) EVMS devices. Once the devices are mounted, does the installer need any special help to know it can install to them? I'm going to be playing around with moving toward that intermediate goal by creating an appropriately evms enabled/patched kernel for the installer and a working evms udeb. Given that the initramfs tools are apparently a bit of a mess at the moment, and that I don't know much about this area, I may not get anywhere You don't need a special kernel these days. Just make sure the evms package is installed before the initramfs is generated, and it should be fine (to the degree that what we have today is fine -- expect this to get better over the coming month or so). The EVMS site lists a number of patches to get all the features working, even with a 2.6 kernel (in particular snapshot and bad block relocation). Are these in the default Debian kernels? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#344065: evms: integrate EVMS with debian-installer
On Thu, Dec 29, 2005 at 04:58:23PM -0800, Ross Boylan wrote: Once the devices are mounted, does the installer need any special help to know it can install to them? I would be surprised if it didn't. The EVMS site lists a number of patches to get all the features working, even with a 2.6 kernel (in particular snapshot and bad block relocation). Are these in the default Debian kernels? You can do snapshots just fine. BBR needs a patched kernel, but hey -- do you really need to build those in the installation? /* Steinar */ -- Homepage: http://www.sesse.net/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#344065: evms: integrate EVMS with debian-installer
On Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 11:07:37AM -0800, Ross Boylan wrote: I would like to be able to use the Debian installer to create a system in which all the partitions, including root, were managed by EVMS. This is a duplicate of #223995 / #239892, I'd guess. I don't have a good sense of what's involved in making this happen, and it may be the installer team doesn't want the added complexity. The things that would be needed is: - Make sure the evms udeb works properly again (IIRC it's broken somehow, perhaps with regard to libraries or something). - Make a partman module for evms. This is definitely the most demanding task, and needs someone who's familiar with both evms and partman (which is a shell script of several thousand lines). - Test, integrate, debug :-) There appear to be quite a few bugs against EVMS (mostly concerning making initrd's) that probably need to be fixed before it can work with the installer. ATM my current priority is getting _something_ into testing, so I can upload a fix to stable for #339891. A more modest solution would be to provide instructions about how to use EVMS with the installer. At the moment it appears to require a two or three step process: 1) install regular Debian system 2) make EVMS system and partitions 3) delete original system and reclaim its space. Well, yes and no. See the package evms-bootdebug -- with it, you can get into a rescue console, where you can convert your filesystems quite painlessly to EVMS drives -- no deletion needed. If you want to convert from ordinary volumes to EVMS+LVM2 (or something along those lines), you'd have to make new, move data and then delete, yes. /* Steinar */ -- Homepage: http://www.sesse.net/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#344065: evms: integrate EVMS with debian-installer
On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 10:32:01AM +0100, Steinar H. Gunderson wrote: On Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 11:07:37AM -0800, Ross Boylan wrote: I would like to be able to use the Debian installer to create a system in which all the partitions, including root, were managed by EVMS. This is a duplicate of #223995 / #239892, I'd guess. It may be that fixing those would fill this wish, but that wasn't clear to me. I think there is at least one additional element, which is that the changes need to be integrated into the debian installer. 223995 udeb is incomplete and mostly non-functional seemed to apply to earlier versions. Discussion on debian-boot suggests there is no evms stuff in the etch installer right now. 239892 looked as if it might be specific to the business card install, and it might describe fiddling with evms post-install rather than integrating it into the installation. I don't have a good sense of what's involved in making this happen, and it may be the installer team doesn't want the added complexity. The things that would be needed is: - Make sure the evms udeb works properly again (IIRC it's broken somehow, perhaps with regard to libraries or something). - Make a partman module for evms. This is definitely the most demanding task, and needs someone who's familiar with both evms and partman (which is a shell script of several thousand lines). Yikes! An additional issue that occurred to me is the use of evmsgui. The installer is non-graphical, so I don't know if providing evmsgui would be appropriate. It sounds from this description as if partman is the front-end for installation. That said, I've noticed two strands recently on debian-boot. First, there is a graphical installer being developed. Second, there has been some discussion about including C++; I think this was motivated by an interest in including a graphical partition tool (a parted flavor using qt was discussed). This might be a good place to jump in and suggest evmsgui as an alternative, particularly if it doesn't require C++. There were reservations about including C++ in the installer. EVMS's ability to handle a wide range of disks and filesystems is probably a plus for the installer. Obviously, people would want to know that using evms to partition doesn't force you to use EVMS later (I think it doesn't as long as you use native partitions). One other wrinkle might be the requirement that /boot be on a fairly vanilla partition. There needs to be a way to catch if that is not happening and tell the person doing the install to fix it up. - Test, integrate, debug :-) There appear to be quite a few bugs against EVMS (mostly concerning making initrd's) that probably need to be fixed before it can work with the installer. ATM my current priority is getting _something_ into testing, so I can upload a fix to stable for #339891. I completely support that, hence this is wishlist. On the other hand, perhaps your remark means that you could have the integration with the installer done so quickly that it would interfere with the 10 day hold on the upload for 339891 :) A more modest solution would be to provide instructions about how to use EVMS with the installer. At the moment it appears to require a two or three step process: 1) install regular Debian system 2) make EVMS system and partitions 3) delete original system and reclaim its space. Well, yes and no. See the package evms-bootdebug -- with it, you can get Thanks. I wasn't aware of the package. into a rescue console, where you can convert your filesystems quite painlessly to EVMS drives -- no deletion needed. If you want to convert from ordinary volumes to EVMS+LVM2 (or something along those lines), you'd have to make new, move data and then delete, yes. I thought EVMS was still at LVM1. /* Steinar */ Thanks for the info, and for your work packaging EVMS. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#344065: evms: integrate EVMS with debian-installer
Package: evms Version: 2.5.2-1 Severity: wishlist I would like to be able to use the Debian installer to create a system in which all the partitions, including root, were managed by EVMS. The daily builds of the etch installer have support for LVM but not, as far as I can tell, EVMS. I don't have a good sense of what's involved in making this happen, and it may be the installer team doesn't want the added complexity. There appear to be quite a few bugs against EVMS (mostly concerning making initrd's) that probably need to be fixed before it can work with the installer. A more modest solution would be to provide instructions about how to use EVMS with the installer. At the moment it appears to require a two or three step process: 1) install regular Debian system 2) make EVMS system and partitions 3) delete original system and reclaim its space. This seems awkward. You might also want to refer to the thread starting at http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2005/12/msg00218.html -- Package-specific info: -- System Information: Debian Release: testing/unstable APT prefers testing APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (990, 'stable'), (50, 'unstable') Architecture: i386 (i686) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Kernel: Linux 2.4.27advncdfs Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US (charmap=ISO-8859-1) Versions of packages evms depends on: ii libc6 2.3.5-8GNU C Library: Shared libraries an ii libevms-2.5 2.5.2-1Enterprise Volume Management Syste Versions of packages evms recommends: ii evms-cli 2.5.2-1Enterprise Volume Management Syste ii evms-gui 2.5.2-1Enterprise Volume Management Syste ii evms-ncurses 2.5.2-1Enterprise Volume Management Syste -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
