[gentoo-user] remote installation, dual boot
I plan to install a fresh gentoo linux in parallel to an existing SLES 10 server. The server runs with /boot and / on 2 raid1 devices, there is a large RAID6 array building the PV for several logical volumes with data on it. The idea is to have the server booted from live media (chroot does not work as the current kernel of SLES is too old [1] ) ... install the new gentoo-root into a new LV, set up dracut for an LVM-based root and place the new kernel and initrd into the existing /boot (with old grub currently). Should/could work, right? The extra kick (again): the server is ~600 km away from me ;-) I should keep up SLES as fallback as long as I got everything up and running in gentoo. The server is doing backups to a tape library and monitoring stuff via nagios ... the new feature to be enabled is KVM virtualization (yes, the CPU is supporting this). I have access via some KVM over IP so I can access the server console directly in case (choice of boot option, repairing stuff). Any particular tips for me? The grub installed is grub-0.97-16.27.1 (SLES-release). Is that expected to work with recent kernels/initrds? I assume. I won't touch partitions/RAIDs/bootloader for now ... these things might follow later when gentoo is working on the server. Thanks, Stefan [1] Linux version 2.6.16.60-0.66.1-smp
Re: [gentoo-user] remote installation, dual boot
On 23.04.2015 17:09, Mike Gilbert wrote: Some pointers: - Unpack your stage tarball. - Build the kernel and initramfs on an existing Gentoo system and copy them over. - Add the gentoo kernel and initramfs to menu.lst. - Clear out the root password in /etc/shadow. - Reboot the box. You can then log in as root on the console, configure networking, and run from there. hmm, yes, I see. I have a gentoo server there so I have a preparation machine at hand. I will see if I get that figured out ... got to get the kernel-options and dracut modules right. thanks, S
Re: [gentoo-user] remote installation, dual boot
On 23.04.2015 17:43, Stefan G. Weichinger wrote: I will see if I get that figured out ... got to get the kernel-options and dracut modules right. first try started booting but couldn't mount rootfs ... and now the box hangs there and I can't press the power button (only PS/2 attached keyboard/mouse) got to wait for the folks there to come to work tmrw ;-)
Re: [gentoo-user] remote installation, dual boot
On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 10:49 AM, Stefan G. Weichinger li...@xunil.at wrote: I plan to install a fresh gentoo linux in parallel to an existing SLES 10 server. The server runs with /boot and / on 2 raid1 devices, there is a large RAID6 array building the PV for several logical volumes with data on it. The idea is to have the server booted from live media (chroot does not work as the current kernel of SLES is too old [1] ) ... install the new gentoo-root into a new LV, set up dracut for an LVM-based root and place the new kernel and initrd into the existing /boot (with old grub currently). You should be able to get away with not using a livecd: you don't really need to chroot to get an initial Gentoo system working, *especially if you have console access*. Some pointers: - Unpack your stage tarball. - Build the kernel and initramfs on an existing Gentoo system and copy them over. - Add the gentoo kernel and initramfs to menu.lst. - Clear out the root password in /etc/shadow. - Reboot the box. You can then log in as root on the console, configure networking, and run from there.
