setup-storage and preserving partitions

[Michael Tautschnig]

> On Fri, 2010-03-26 at 13:08 -0600, Jeffrey Stolte wrote:
> 
> > (I should mention that one of our main uses of FAI is to upgrade
> > machines from one Debian release to the next.  However, rather than do
> > an in-place upgrade, we do a fresh install of the new release while
> > preserving the existing partition sizes on the disk.)
> > 
> > I hope this makes some sense.  If no one else has asked for this
> > capability, though, maybe we need to reconsider our practice of
> > preserving partition sizes.  I don't want you to have to add an option
> > that no one else uses or that is not considered to be a "best
> practice".
> > Let me know if you need any additional information.  Thanks.
> 
> I would cast another vote towards adding such an option. Our use case is
> the following: we have several dual-booting laptops where the Windows
> partition(s), as well as the master boot record (which may contain
> manufacturer-specific code to access recovery partitions, etc) should be
> touched as little as possible. Just as the above user, we prefer fresh
> installs to in-place upgrades.
> 
> It would feel very reassuring if there were an option in FAI which
> essentially meant "do not touch anything in disk paritioning, just
> create new filesystems on existing partitions where requested, and leave
> all the rest unchanged".
> 
> In today's situation, I always feel an urge to test my setups (based on
> hooks and/or manual intervention) several times on a "disposable" test
> machine before I dare to run FAI on a "real" system.
> 

I've added an option "always_format" which can be used along with
preserve_always, etc. and works the same way as the "format" option did in
setup_harddisks. 

I believe the following should work, adapting Jeffrey's example:

disk_config sda disklabel:msdos bootable:1 preserve_always:1,2,5,6,7 always_format:1,2,5
primary  /      0   ext3  defaults,errors=remount-ro    createopts="-j"
primary  swap   0   swap  sw
logical  /var   0   ext3  defaults,errors=remount-ro    createopts="-j"
logical  /home  0   ext3  defaults,nosuid,nodev,errors=remount-ro
logical  /d1    0   ext3  defaults,nosuid,nodev,errors=remount-ro

In case some of the partitions need not exist in all cases, you can use
preserve_lazy instead of preserve_always, but then some size other than 0 must
be specified.

This option is available as of 3.3.5+experimental2. For details on how to obtain
the experimental builds please see
http://faiwiki.informatik.uni-koeln.de/index.php/Main_Page#getting_FAI
Testing is much appreciated!!


Best,
Michael

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