Re: setup-storage/parted problems with FAI 4.0.3 (also with 3.4.8ubuntu2)
On 09/06/2012 02:22 PM, Peter Langer wrote:
> Hi,
>
> i have a computer with Win7 pre-installed and i'd like to install FAI on
> it. Everything seems to work fine, however i get this warning:
> "Preserved partition /dev/sda1 does not end at a cylinder boundary,
> parted may fail to restore the partition!"
> Grub installs fine and i can boot Linux without problems. However my
> Windows doesn't boot anymore ( status 0xc00e ). I can fix the
> Windows issue using the Win7 DVD but that's not really something i want
> to do on multiple computers.
> I'll try to give you as much information as possible.
>
> Here is the "debug=1 disklist=sda setup-storage" output
> http://pastebin.com/2dEGqP2D ( the output is missing STDERR stuff as i
> couldn't seem to 2>&1 properly. The STDERR output doesn't contain
> anything of interest though except for the warning ).
>
> I also tried installing Windows 7 in Virtualbox ( killing the 100mb
> partition that Windows 7 creates ) and installing FAI afterwards. The
> same problem occurs.
I had the same problem. Probably You "preserve_always" e.g. partition 1 (which
has Windows 7 installed). The problem is that "preserve_always" don't mean
"Don't touch partition 1" -- it means "Create partition 1 with same size and
type" (If I understand it right). So a new MBR is written to disk with a new
disk-signatur and this is the reason why Windows 7 doesn't boot (The Windows 7
boot loader checks the disk-signature).
Workaround I test at the moment:
Use a hook to save old disk-signature (e.g. partition.GRUB_PC):
for disk in $disklist
dd if=/dev/${disk} of=${LOGDIR}/disk_${disk}_signature ibs=1 skip=440 count=4
done
And run a script to just restore the disk-signatur e.g.:
dd if=${LOGDIR}/disk_sda_signature of=/dev/sda obs=1 seek=440 count=4
Maybe somebody has a better solution?
Best regards,
Ralf
Re: setup-storage/parted problems with FAI 4.0.3 (also with 3.4.8ubuntu2)
> On 09/06/2012 02:22 PM, Peter Langer wrote: > I had the same problem. Probably You "preserve_always" e.g. partition 1 > (which has Windows 7 installed). The problem is that "preserve_always" > don't mean "Don't touch partition 1" -- it means "Create partition 1 > with same size and type" (If I understand it right). So a new MBR is > written to disk with a new disk-signatur and this is the reason why > Windows 7 doesn't boot (The Windows 7 boot loader checks the > disk-signature). [..] > Maybe somebody has a better solution? Convince setup-storage that 'preserve_???' really means 'do not touch this partition at all? tschüß thomas P.S.: Uh. Oh. I can see where this is heading.
IPMI problem with FAI and wheezy
Hi, I'm at my wits' end now with this old system, perhaps one of you can come up with another idea: The hardware is somewhat old, SuperMicro H8SSL board with IPMI card (BMC) looped into eth0 (Broadcom Tigon3). Excerpts from the demsg file: [0.00] Linux version 3.2.0-3-amd64 (Debian 3.2.23-1) (debian-ker...@lists.debian.org) (gcc version 4.6.3 (Debian 4.6.3-8) ) #1 SMP Mon Jul 23 02:45:17 UTC 2012 [0.00] ACPI: FACP 7ffe0290 000F4 (v03 A M I OEMFACP 12000606 MSFT 0097) [0.00] ACPI: DSDT 7ffe0410 033A8 (v01 0ABSW 0ABSW005 0005 INTL 02002026) [0.884954] tg3 :02:03.0: eth0: Tigon3 [partno(BCM95704A6) rev 2100] (PCIX:133MHz:64-bit) MAC address xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx I used to set "console=ttyS1,19200n1" in the pxelinux.cfg file, and watch FAI running via serial-over-LAN, but that stops right at the beginning - and the IPMI card cannot be reached afterwards, not by rebooting, nor by applying other tricks. The only way to get the connection back is power- cycling the whole box. This behaviour did not show up with Squeeze (2.6.32-5 kernel). I'm suspecting a change in the handling of the eth0/BMC bridge by the tg3 driver, but that's only part of the story: it gets worse. Trying to shut down the machine (actually, a whole set of machines, all behaving the same, so it's not a single fault), by running "shutdown -h now", will not halt but reboot it. The only way to reliably switch it off seems to be to run "ipmitool chassis power soft", then "shutdown -h now". The machine will then stay off for exactly 24 hours, then magically restart. Needless to say I didn't change any BIOS settings, nor implemented kind of a watchdog on the BMC. Is there anything I can do to nail down the problem? Thank you in advance for your suggestions. Steffen
Re: setup-storage/parted problems with FAI 4.0.3 (also with 3.4.8ubuntu2)
On Fri, 2012-09-07 at 09:48 +0200, Thomas Neumann wrote: > > On 09/06/2012 02:22 PM, Peter Langer wrote: > > I had the same problem. Probably You "preserve_always" e.g. partition 1 > > (which has Windows 7 installed). The problem is that "preserve_always" > > don't mean "Don't touch partition 1" -- it means "Create partition 1 > > with same size and type" (If I understand it right). So a new MBR is > > written to disk with a new disk-signatur and this is the reason why > > Windows 7 doesn't boot (The Windows 7 boot loader checks the > > disk-signature). > [..] > > Maybe somebody has a better solution? > > Convince setup-storage that 'preserve_???' really means 'do not touch this > partition at all? I had long discussions with Michael Tautsching about these topics about 1-1.5 years ago. Check the list archives. Basically, with the various combinations of re-sizing and partial re-creation of partitions, it was much easier to program setup-storage to re-create all partitions at all times. There is one exception, though: if you specify "preserve_always:all" this is taken literally to mean that the existing partion table should not be touched at all. My solution has been to manually set up the dual-boot machines' partitions with the gparted (booted from a CD) and then use the above-mentioned option to install Debian via FAI. This works if you have just a handful of machines to set up (like we do). For obvious reasons it does not scale well :-) . Caution: the development by M. Tautschnig was done in the "experimental" branch of setup-storage, and I am using this version. I believe that the "preserve_always:all" new semantics made it into the trunk, but I am not 100% sure. So you should check yourself, and possibly use the "experimental" version (fai wiki has a page explaining where to get it). Different versions of setup-storage and the rest of fai can be combined freely, so you need not replace the rest with the experimental version unless needed for other reasons. Unfortunately Michael has disappeared from the list some time ago. Does anyone know what has come of him? He was very helpful in developing setup-storage. Toomas
