Some issues

[Steffen Grunewald]

On Fri, Aug 27, 2004 at 05:36:59PM +0200, Thomas Lange wrote:
>     > OK; I'll try. Where is the value written to variables.sh?
> define rootpw in class/*.var. After all variables are defined, the
> task defvar writes then to variables.sh.

OK, found. This perl line is something to experiment with, and, yes,
using single quotes did cure the problem entirely. No more crippled
MD5 passwords. Please consider using this in your examples, too.

>     > XFS. Perhaps Reiser. But XFS is most important (for me).
>     > Using xfsprogs, I can format XFS partitions during install, but cannot
>     > write to them...
> From setup_harddisks:
> 
> # Last changes: 14.07.2003 by Thomas Lange add xfs filesystem support
> # reiserfs patch 8.11.2001 by Diane Trout <diane at caltech.edu>

At least xfs doesn't seem to work:
pandora:/fai/class# mkdir /tmp/target/scratch
pandora:/fai/class# mount -t xfs -r /dev/hda9 /tmp/target/scratch
mount: fs type xfs not supported by kernel

pandora:/fai/class# find /lib/modules -name \*xfs\*
pandora:/fai/class#

Not in kernel, no module. Probably commented out by mistake?
(CONFIG_FS_XFS is set to "m" in kernel-config from fai-kernels 1.7.1)

Thanks for your NIS suggestions, I guess I worked it out. Here's my
script to do it:

#!/bin/sh
DOMAIN=`cat $target/etc/defaultdomain`
ifclass NIS && {
[ -f $target/etc/default/nis ] && . $target/etc/default/nis
chroot $target domainname $DOMAIN
}

ifclass pandora && {
    if [ "$NISSERVER" = "master" ]; then
# set up an yp master server
#	chroot $target chroot $target /usr/lib/yp/ypinit -m ... requires manual input
	echo ypmake
        chroot $target sh -c "cd /var/yp && make NOPUSH=true target 2>&1"
    elif [ "$NISSERVER" = "slave" ]; then
# not yet tested!!!
	echo ypinit -s from $NISMASTER
	chroot $target sh -c "/usr/lib/yp/ypinit -s $NISMASTER"
    fi
}
exit 0

At least for the master server it works fine. For slave servers,
probably a patch to ypinit is necessary (and perhaps to start ypbind
so that ypwhich can talk to someone). But that's peanuts, since ypinit
-s can run silently which ypinit -m needs keyboard interaction (bad
design IMHO, to have several input loops to be ended with CTRL-D EOFs).

I'm now trying to figure out how to netboot an Alpha: the naked kernel
doesn't do the trick, and a boot floppy seems to be impossible (large
kernel, no boot loader). Any ideas from the list?

Cheers,
 Steffen

-- 
Steffen Grunewald * * * Merlin cluster admin (http://pandora.aei.mpg.de)
Albert-Einstein-Institut (MPI Gravitationsphysik, http://www.aei.mpg.de)
       Science Park Golm, Am Mühlenberg 1, 14476 Potsdam, Germany
e-mail: steffen.grunewald(*)aei.mpg.de * +49-331-567-{fon:7233,fax:7298}