FAI Stable release 3.4.4 available

[Darshaka Pathirana]

Hey Mika!

On 10/15/2010 01:30 PM, Michael Prokop wrote:
> 
> as promised I just released FAI stable release 3.4.4.
> 
> Binary packages of FAI 3.4.4 are available at:
> 
>    http://people.debian.org/~mika/fai/release/
> 
> [snip]
> 
> Please upgrade to FAI 3.4.4 and report back if you notice any problems.
> Thanks to all involved people for their excellent work!

Finally! Had some time for testing. (Having time is relativ, but who
cares.. ;))

Nice work! Thx! This is my review so far:

 * The fstab-problem is gone. Fine![1]

[1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.fai/8024

 * still problems with RAID1 + grub-pc

Altough I actually /have/ found a working setup for myself I thought I
should point out this problem again:

When creating a RAID1 and using the class GRUB_PC, grub only get's
installed into "(hd0)" (see 10-setup).
After creating such a setup, boot into the system. Wait until the
disks are in sync (watch /proc/mdstat). Now shutdown and remove sda.
You'll notice a non-booting system.

Altough Michael [Tautschnig] merged some of my patches into the (his?)
experimental-branch[2], these changes never hit trunk. (Sorry,
Michael: I really had no time to test your experimental package and in
the end I forgot about it...)

So thread [2] is still valid. You might consider the (second)
10-setup-patch.

[2] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.fai/7572/focus=7575

The script works for raid and non-raid systems like the following:

disk_config/LVM:

disk_config disk1 bootable:1 fstabkey:uuid
primary  /boot         250       ext3  rw
primary  -             1500-       -     -

disk_config lvm
vg vgroup disk1.2
vgroup-root  /       250-750   ext3  rw,errors=remount-ro
vgroup-swap  swap    250-1000  swap  sw
vgroup-var   /var    500-2G    ext3  rw createopts="-m15" tuneopts="-c0 -i0"
vgroup-tmp   /tmp    250-1000  ext3  rw createopts="-m1"  tuneopts="-c0 -i0"
vgroup-usr   /usr    500-3G    ext3  rw                   tuneopts="-c0 -i0"
vgroup-home  /home   100-2G    ext3  rw,nosuid  createopts="-m1" tuneopts="-c0 -i10"

disk_config/RAIDLVM:

disk_config sda bootable:1 fstabkey:uuid
primary  -             250         -     -
primary  -             1500-       -     -

disk_config sdb bootable:1 fstabkey:uuid
primary  -             250         -     -
primary  -             1500-       -     -

disk_config raid raid1 /boot  sda1,sdb1                  ext3 rw,errors=remount-ro
raid1 -      sda2,sdb2                  -    -

disk_config lvm vg vgroup md1
vgroup-root  /       250-750   ext3  rw,errors=remount-ro
vgroup-swap  swap    250-1000  swap  sw
vgroup-var   /var    500-2G    ext3  rw createopts="-m15" tuneopts="-c0 -i0"
vgroup-tmp   /tmp    250-1000  ext3  rw createopts="-m1"  tuneopts="-c0 -i0"
vgroup-usr   /usr    500-3G    ext3  rw                   tuneopts="-c0 -i0"
vgroup-home  /home   100-2G    ext3  rw,nosuid  createopts="-m1" tuneopts="-c0 -i10"

(Taking /boot out of the LVM is actually not necessary anymore, as
grub-pc can handle /boot in an LVM.)

 * reuse LVM-on-RAID disks (it may be an LVM-only problem but I did not encouter
this problem without RAID) ...

Steps to reproduce:

Use a maschine with two hdds (sda/sdb).  Use a (simple) setup or use a disk
layout like my RAIDLVM above and deploy the machine. And then do it
again. (That should wipe away all data...!)

But: FAI fails with:

[snip]
Executing: yes | mdadm --create  /dev/md0 --level=raid1 --force --run --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1
Executing: mkfs.ext3  /dev/md0
Executing: yes | mdadm --create  /dev/md1 --level=raid1 --force --run --raid-devices=2 /dev/sdb2 /dev/sda2
Executing: pvcreate  /dev/md1
Command had non-zero exit code
Error in task partition. Traceback: task_error task_partition task task_install task task_action task main
FATAL ERROR. Installation stopped.

FAI then dropped me to the shell. I then did the following to check-out the problem:

% pvcreate /dev/md1
  Can't initialize physical volume "/dev/md1" of volume group "vgroup" without -ff

I manually did a "pvremove -ff /dev/md1" and re-ran FAI. That worked.

I also checked the fai.log and noticed that setup-storage seems to
scan for volume groups after partitioning the disks. Maybe it should
do that after creating the RAID-setup too...

Regards and thank you all for your work!
 - Darsha