[Server-devel] 'Interactive' XS installation - was: Problems installing XS on new system for Uruguay

Fri Jun 6 09:11:34 EDT 2008

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: gregmsmi at cisco.com
To: stefan_w_reitz at hotmail.com

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:stefan_w_reitz at hotmail.com] 
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: stefan_w_reitz at hotmail.com
CC: gregmsmi at cisco.com
Subject: Fw:   [Server-devel] Problems installing XS on new system for Uruguay
From:   tpearson at us.ibm.com
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:         tpearson at us.ibm.com |  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         <stefan_w_reitz at hotmail.com> 06/05/2008 10:39 AM 
                                                            To            Tony Pearson/Tucson/IBM at IBMUS,               Martin Langhoff <martin.langhoff at gmail.com>                                     cc            <server-devel at 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: martin.langhoff at gmail.com
From:   tpearson at us.ibm.com
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2008 09:31:32 -0700
CC:   server-devel at 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:         tpearson at us.ibm.com |  GSA:         http://tucgsa.ibm.com/~tpearson
Blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/InsideSystemStorage
AKA: 990tony Paravane, eightbar         specialist           

                'Martin Langhoff'         <martin.langhoff at gmail.com> 06/05/2008 08:41 AM                                                             To            Tony               Pearson/Tucson/IBM at IBMUS                                               cc            server-devel at lists.laptop.org                                     Subject            Re: [Server-devel] Problems               installing XS on new system for         Uruguay

2008/6/5 Tony Pearson   <tpearson at us.ibm.com>:
> 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
--   
martin.langhoff at gmail.com
martin at laptop.org -- 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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