Problem with GPT and a 12TB RAID-5 partition
Garb Dowle
garb.dowle at gmail.com
Mon Sep 13 17:30:17 CEST 2010
Hi!
Thanks Stephan, with your hint I managed to get Ubuntu 10.04 installed on
the 12TB RAID5, but not without a little interaction during the install
process. I used following setup-storage config:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
# <type> <mountpoint> <size> <fs type> <mount options> <misc options>
disk_config /dev/sda disklabel:gpt
primary - 1 - -
primary /boot 200 ext3 defaults
primary swap 4G swap defaults
primary - 100G- - -
disk_config lvm
vg system /dev/sda4
system-rootlv / 20G xfs defaults
system-homelv /home 5G xfs defaults
system-tmplv /tmp 10G xfs defaults
system-usrlv /usr 10G xfs defaults
system-varlv /var 10G xfs defaults
system-optlv /opt 10G xfs defaults
system-srvlv /srv 10G xfs defaults
------------------------------
----------------------------------------
The first partition for /dev/sda is the bios partition. I don't know how to
set the neccessary flag "bios_grub" for it in this config file. If it's not
set, then grub-pc won't install correctly and the system will not boot.
A workaround for this problem is to set it manually while installing with
fai. By enabling the FAI_FLAG "creatvt" I can get a shell with ALT+F2 and
run "parted /dev/sda", after fai has finished the task "partition". Then I
enable the flag with "set 1 bios_grub on". After the installation the new
system will boot! The output of gdisk is following:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.5.1
Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present
Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/sda: 23437369344 sectors, 10.9 TiB
Disk identifier (GUID): E426DEA8-1CAD-4BC8-A00C-5D79EC8E497C
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 23437369310
Total free space is 4029 sectors (2.0 MiB)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 2048 4095 1024.0 KiB EF02 primary
2 4096 413695 200.0 MiB 0700 primary
3 413696 8802303 4.0 GiB 8200 primary
4 8802304 23437367295 10.9 TiB 8E00 primary
----------------------------------------------------------------------
One other thing to mention:
At first, I tried it with following setup-storage config, because it is our
standard partition layout:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
# <type> <mountpoint> <size> <fs type> <mount options> <misc options>
disk_config /dev/sda disklabel:gpt
primary - 1 - -
primary /boot 200 ext3 defaults
primary swap 4G swap defaults
primary / 20G xfs defaults
primary - 100G- - -
disk_config lvm
vg system /dev/sda4
system-homelv /home 5G xfs defaults
system-tmplv /tmp 10G xfs defaults
system-usrlv /usr 10G xfs defaults
system-varlv /var 10G xfs defaults
system-optlv /opt 10G xfs defaults
system-srvlv /srv 10G xfs defaults
----------------------------------------------------------------------
This should be working as GPT supports more than four primary partitions,
but unfortunately it is not working. The partition task will abort with
something like "Error: only 20G space available for the logical volumes, but
75G are needed".
It would be great if someone could give me some help for at least setting
the "bios_grub" flag in the setup-storage config, so that I don't need to
set it manually with parted.
Thanks!
Regards
Garb
On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 2:26 PM, Stephan Hermann <sh at sourcecode.de> wrote:
> Moins,
>
> I wonder if grub / grub_pc is able to boot from gpt partitions.
>
> and the partition "gpt-bios" is not know, you should declare it as
> "gpt" in setup-storage disk config, e.g.
>
>
>
> disk_config disk1 disklabel:gpt fstabkey:uuid
> primary - 0- - -
>
>
>
> (this definition is for a drbd device, so you need to configure your fs
> etc.)
>
> Regards,
>
> \sh
>
>
> On Thu, 9 Sep 2010 17:44:46 +0200
> Garb Dowle <garb.dowle at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > if I select "gpt-bios" as disklabel in my setup-storage config, then,
> > after installation of a Ubuntu 10.04 Server with FAI 3.3.5 it won't
> > boot. After the BIOS-Screen, there will be only a blinking cursor on
> > a blank screen, and nothing happens.
> >
> > Installing Ubuntu 10.04 with an Installation-CD on that system works
> > fine. It recognizes my 12TB RAID-5 and adds a 1MByte BIOS Partition.
> > The output of "gdisk -l /dev/sda" on that system shows:
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.5.1
> >
> > Partition table scan:
> > MBR: protective
> > BSD: not present
> > APM: not present
> > GPT: present
> >
> > Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
> > Disk /dev/sda: 23437369344 sectors, 10.9 TiB
> > Disk identifier (GUID): E206388F-7243-4EDF-BE0A-18E4F038DC38
> > Partition table holds up to 128 entries
> > First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 23437369310
> > Total free space is 4029 sectors (2.0 MiB)
> >
> > Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
> > 1 2048 4095 1024.0 KiB EF02
> > 2 4096 503807 244.0 MiB 0700
> > 3 503808 23437367295 10.9 TiB 8E00
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > I noticed, that setup-storage will add the BIOS Partition for GPT
> > always as the last partition. I tried to place it at the beginning of
> > the partition table, so that the partition table will look like that
> > one generated from the Installer-CD, but I wasn't successful.
> >
> > Does somebody know how I can get this working?
> >
> > Thanks!
>
>
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