FYI (and please comment)
Stefan
Subject: RE: [Server-devel] Problems installing XS on new system for Uruguay
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2008 07:50:30 -0400
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Hi Stefan, Do you mind sending this to the server list? I'm sure they will be
interested in this discussion. There's been some debate on how interactive the
install should be and how much GUI should be available for it. Thanks for
commenting and helping Tony! Thanks, Greg S
From: Stefan Reitz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, June 06, 2008 12:53 AM
To: Tony Pearson
Cc: Greg Smith (gregmsmi)
Subject: RE: [Server-devel] Problems installing XS on new system for Uruguay
Tony,
I, too, was tempted to use a different underlying distribution. But as I didn't
(and still don't) know how to port things like the presence service, I thought
about how I can make the current XS setup do those two or three extra things I
thought necessary.
The standard fedora live cd can do all I want (except for the XS specific
features), but the XS installation is non-interactive, meaning it doesn't allow
for my own partitioning scheme, or raid, or other things you usually determine
during setup.
So the next logical step seems to me to make the decisions about partitioning
and raid before the install and let the non-interactive setup routine take care
of the installation.
This means you'd want the XS live cd with slightly changed setup parameters.
But how do you tell the setup routine what you want? Here comes the kickstart
file. You take the live cd files you find here:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Building_Software and look into what the ks.cfg
file says. You'll easily recognize that the statements there resemble what the
XS turns out to be. Now you can either just edit the ks.cfg with a text editor
to make the installation yield different results, or use revisor as a graphical
tool (sort of like the interactive setup, but not really running an
installation but only creating the setup configuration / kickstart file) to
make a kickstart file.
Since I messed with this in early april, I have already forgotten some steps.
So right now I am installing the fedora 9 live cd to an old laptop and
hopefully I can give you some more detailed information soon.
I discourage trying to port all XS functionality to a different Distro all by
yourself. Without the help of those who patched ejabberd and many others who
made the XS a not-so-off-the-shelf product you will have a pretty hard time. At
least partly because of a lack of readily available documentation and system
description ....
Stefan
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Fw: [Server-devel] Problems installing XS on new system for Uruguay
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2008 16:50:08 -0700
Stefan,
Thanks for the advice. I will investigate 'dmraid' and discontinue the BIOS
RAID approach.
Your 'spin your own distribution' suggestion is valid, the team is now
exploring Debian versus Fedora as the base.
Thanks
Tony Pearson
Senior Storage Consultant, IBM System Storage™
Telephone: +1 520-799-4309 | tie 321-4309 | Cell: +1 520 990-8669
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | GSA: http://tucgsa.ibm.com/~tpearson
Blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/InsideSystemStorage
AKA: 990tony Paravane, eightbar specialist
----- Forwarded by Tony Pearson/Tucson/IBM on 06/05/2008 01:22 PM -----
Stefan Reitz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 06/05/2008 10:39 AM
To Tony
Pearson/Tucson/[EMAIL PROTECTED], Martin Langhoff <[EMAIL
PROTECTED]> cc
<server-devel@lists.laptop.org> Subject
RE: [Server-devel] Problems installing XS on new system
for Uruguay
Tony,
trying to make the XS do raid (which it does (/did?) not support by default)
I learned the following:
Linux softraid (aka dmraid) is 'better' / 'more stable' than mother board
vendor's fakeraid, so disable raid in bios and let linux dmraid take care of
it. I don't know enough about ahci to comment on that option.
Since you apparently want to install to a raid 1 you'll need to 'spin' your
own personalized XS distribution.
my noob approach: set up a working fedora system (on other hardware than your
target system - you may need to go back to this fedora system to make changes
to your new setup).
Get the files necessary for making your own:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Building_Software distribution
A hands-on kickstart tutorial:
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/08/19/kickstart.html - the
'Creating the Kickstart Config File, ks.cfg' section gives you some food for
thought. For the more grafically oriented looking at RedHat / Fedora's
'Revisor' tool might be interesting (a quick intro can be found here:
http://dailypackage.fedorabook.com/index.php?/archives/70-Fedora-7-Custom-Spins-with-Revisor.html)
Good luck
Stefan
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2008 09:31:32 -0700
CC: server-devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Problems installing XS on new system for Uruguay
Martin,
I'll try the 'lspci' commands to see what it says.
What 'dmesg' should I look for? -- when I do: dmesg | grep 'sd'[ab] I get
that it finds both /sda and /sdb individually, so not detecting the RAID
mode.
The 'autoinstall' fails either because of the Radeon X1200 or the 'clearpart'
command on Line 23. I've burned a copy of XS-160-noauto if you want me to
try that.
I've been scanning the Fedora forums for 'dmraid' support, and it doesn't
look like it has support for this SB600 SATA RAID controller.
Uruguay = EduBlog/Ceibal/Greg Smith. I am building the server to Greg's
request, so whatever he is now calling this project that is what it is.
Thanks
Tony Pearson
Senior Storage Consultant, IBM System Storage™
Telephone: +1 520-799-4309 | tie 321-4309 | Cell: +1 520 990-8669
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | GSA: http://tucgsa.ibm.com/~tpearson
Blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/InsideSystemStorage
AKA: 990tony Paravane, eightbar specialist
'Martin Langhoff' <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 06/05/2008 08:41
AM To
Tony Pearson/Tucson/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
cc server-devel@lists.laptop.org
Subject Re: [Server-devel] Problems
installing XS on new system for Uruguay
2008/6/5 Tony Pearson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Hardware:
Nice hw! But the sata controler might not be supported. When you load
F8 64-bit or Ubuntu,
- what does lspci say about the SATA controller?
- what kernel module loads for it? (dmesg will name it)
> Problem 1: I boot from XS-163.iso and select 'Run from Image' (the first
> choice) and it claims that 'ATI Radeon 1200' is not supported, and that it
It often complains about graphics cards. Nothing to worry about -
Compiz won't be enabled on the XS ;-)
> Problem 2: I log in as 'root' and run the './olpc-install' and it fails on
> line 23 saying 'Specified nonexistent disk sda in clearpart command' with a
> big red button to 'reboot'. (see attached JPG file: img_4751b.jpg for
> screen shot)
Recent images are 'auto install' so you don't need to run olpc-install
by hand...
> Would that work? If I do that, would I be better off doing Fedora7-AMD64
> instead or stay with the 32-bit version?
Unfortunately, we have a few custom packages that are compiled 32-bit
only (nothing too bad, just a recompile away) - but I think your
problem is with missing drivers in F7. Can you try installing F7
32bits?
> Problem 3: the BIOS supports three settings: IDE, RAID and AHCI. With
> RAID, I can hit Ctrl-F to get to the FastBuild utility, and put the two
> drives into a single RAID-1 configuration, however, it does not seem that
> Linux recognizes that. With the two drives as one Logical RAID-1 drive, the
> Linux treats this as separate /dev/sda and /dev/sdb drives.
No idea bout AHCI or fakeraid - sorry
Now - one point I'd like to understand better - when you say 'for
uruguay' you don't mean the Ceibal team, right? (From OLPC
perspective, if you talk about schoolservers in Uruguay, the Ceibal
team is what I think of...). You are doing this for the Edublog
Uruguay team... yes?
cheers,
m
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect
- ask interesting questions
- don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first
- http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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