setup-storage/parted problems with FAI 4.0.3 (also with 3.4.8ubuntu2)

[Toomas Tamm]

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