How to constrain the install through kickstart to one drive

Wed Sep 19 13:16:29 UTC 2007

Hi Maarten,

Thanks again for a very informative reply.  I never thought to think of 
the /proc/partitions file.  This looks like a good choice to use.  Thanks 
very much for your time on this.

Phil

On September 19, 2007 08:35:44 Broekman, Maarten wrote:
> Unfortunately, I'm at a loss.  The environment I'm in is all SCSI disks
> on hardware raid controllers.  I would guess that libata is the ATA
> driver.  Looking in /proc/partitions though I can see all the partitions
> on the disks that the OS can see.
>
> /proc # cat partitions
> major minor  #blocks  name
>
>  104     0   35565360 cciss/c0d0
>  104     1     104391 cciss/c0d0p1
>  104     2    2096482 cciss/c0d0p2
>  104     3    5245222 cciss/c0d0p3
>  104     4          1 cciss/c0d0p4
>  104     5    5245191 cciss/c0d0p5
>  104     6   20772013 cciss/c0d0p6
>  104     7    2096451 cciss/c0d0p7
>  104    16   35565360 cciss/c0d1
>
> On my virtual systems, I can see the following:
> # cat /proc/partitions
> major minor  #blocks  name     rio rmerge rsect ruse wio wmerge wsect
> wuse running use aveq
>
>    8     0   17825792 sda 21808 13601 274314 65860 223847 214442 3515998
> 259910 0 90050 325770
>    8     1     104391 sda1 58 630 1376 220 41 30 142 310 0 500 530
>    8     2    2096482 sda2 24 114 312 20 0 0 0 0 0 20 20
>    8     3    7221217 sda3 27 100 338 80 25 13 280 1310 0 950 1390
>    8     4          1 sda4 1 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
>    8     5    3148708 sda5 1818 6820 68426 18140 42791 31850 597496
> 60360 0 26230 78500
>    8     6    3148708 sda6 19781 5569 202770 47340 180599 180332 2897160
> 194660 0 68550 242000
>    8     7    2096451 sda7 40 99 434 50 391 2217 20920 3270 0 1530 3320
>
> On the other hand, lsmod shows the cciss module on my physicals and
> either the Buslogic or mptscsi driver on my virtuals.  That's what I use
> to make my determination in the %pre section.
>
> In thinking about this some more, /proc/partitions might be a better way
> to determine which drive to partition and how since you are shown all
> the drives and partitions that the OS can see (column 4) as well as
> their block size (1K blocks) (column 3).
>
> Maarten Broekman
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: redhat-list-bounces at redhat.com
> [mailto:redhat-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Phil Savoie
> Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2007 9:24 PM
> To: redhat-list at redhat.com
> Subject: Re: How to constrain the install through kickstart to one drive
>
> Thanks Maarten,
>
> Just curious now... I did an lsmod on 2 machines. On one I see the ahci
> and
> the libata modules loaded.  I don't see these on a machine with IDE
> drives
> installed.  Am I to assume these are the modules for SATA/PATA?  If so,
> good.
> I did not see anything that stood out to me indicating a module for IDE
> disks
> on the IDE only machine with lsmod.  Would you know what module I should
> be
> looking for?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Phil
>
> On Tuesday 18 September 2007 14:45, Broekman, Maarten wrote:
> > If you always know that the drive you want to install on is /dev/sda,
> > --ondisk will do the trick.  The tricky part comes if different
>
> machines
>
> > have their drives addressed in different ways (/dev/hda, /dev/sda,
>
> etc).
>
> > In those cases you can still use a single ks file be creative use of
>
> the
>
> > %pre section to determine the correct disk name to clear and
>
> partition.
>
> > I use a single ks file for each RHEL (one for RHEL3, one for RHEL4,
>
> etc)
>
> > regardless of whether I'm installing on a physical machine
> > (/dev/cciss/c0d0) or virtual machine (/dev/sda) by checking the loaded
> > modules (lsmod) in the %pre section and then changing the partition
> > table accordingly.  This also lets me address different drive sizes in
> > different ways.
> >
> > On the other hand, the kickstart files become a bit more complicated
>
> and
>
> > the chance of errors in the kickstart file go up, but it is possible.
> > The use of multiple kickstart files also depends on the application
> > loadout of the systems you're installing on.  If all the systems get
>
> the
>
> > same package load, then one kickstart file is easy to maintain.  If
> > different servers get different loads, then it's much easier to manage
> > that with multiple kickstart files.
> >
> > Maarten Broekman
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: redhat-list-bounces at redhat.com
> > [mailto:redhat-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Phil Savoie
> > Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2007 2:28 PM
> > To: redhat-list at redhat.com
> > Subject: Re: How to constrain the install through kickstart to one
>
> drive
>
> > Thanks for responding both Andrew and Maarten.
> >
> > Ok then,  I was hoping that there was a way to say, regardless of what
> > drives
> > are installed in the pc, just load the drive that's hanging off
>
> Primary
>
> > Master and leave the rest alone?  This is basically what I want to do.
> > I
> > just didn't want to go through the pc's to find out exactly what type
>
> of
>
> > drives are installed.  Not to start an OS flame war but I can do this
>
> in
>
> > Solaris using the keyword "bootdisk" in the jumpstart profile.  Just
> > wondering if there was something similar in ES4.
> >
> > Thank you again, for your time...
> >
> > Phil
> >
> > On September 18, 2007 13:28:28 Andrew Bacchi wrote:
> > > You can't always use one size fits all.  We have many kickstart
>
> files
>
> > > for our many servers.  Each kickstart is tailored for a type of
>
> server
>
> > > and we use the type that best suits our needs.
> > >
> > > So, the ondisk=sda/hda problem is solved by using the appropriate
> > > kickstart file.  At the install screen we define which kickstart to
> >
> > use
> >
> > > with "linux ks=kickstart_file_name".
> > >
> > > Phil Savoie wrote:
> > > > HI All,
> > > >
> > > > I have a number of machines I would like to install using
>
> kickstart.
>
> > > > This isn't the problem as this I know how to do...but, some pc's
> >
> > have
> >
> > > > more than one HD installed.  Some of the pc's have pata, sata or
>
> ide
>
> > > > drives; that is a mixture of all I have mentioned.  In order to
> >
> > combat
> >
> > > > the problem of kickstart not working on all types of disks, I took
> >
> > out
> >
> > > > the  ondisk=[s|h]da.  This works well on a pc with a single disk.
> >
> > With
> >
> > > > more than one disk, the second disk also get a filesystem.  I
>
> don't
>
> > want
> >
> > > > the second disk touched at all.  Is there a way to do this?
> > > >
> > > > Thanks in advance,
> > > >
> > > > Phil
> > >
> > > --
> > > veritatis simplex oratio est
> > > 		-Seneca
> > >
> > > Andrew Bacchi
> > > Systems Programmer
> > > Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
> > > phone: 518.276.6415  fax: 518.276.2809
> > >
> > > http://www.rpi.edu/~bacchi/
> >
> > --
> > redhat-list mailing list
> > unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request at redhat.com?subject=unsubscribe
> > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
>
> --
> redhat-list mailing list
> unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request at redhat.com?subject=unsubscribe
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list