How should i install gentoo under EVMS???

axa · n00b Joined: 17 Jun 2003 Posts: 51 Location: Taiwan

Hello All:

i've tried to find some of docs from google and EVMS project in sourceforge...

But, nothing document/howto instruct us in installation OS under EVMS.

i have four 120G HDDs need to use EVMS to install gentoo.....

i think: i should use gentoo-liveCD to boot my new box, then???

whats next installation step ???? :roll:

if i using gentoo-liveCD booting my new box , i don't build the initrd image, right ????

Any idea or suggest ???

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Sargonas · Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2003 6:11 pm Post subject:

Never used evms always used lvm but try this thread
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Linuxboy · n00b Joined: 18 Sep 2003 Posts: 13

There are options, but this is what I did to get Gentoo with / (root) on EVMS2 but /boot not on EVMS2 without using any ~x86:

I thought it was important to get root on RAID and to use version 2, so I didn't follow the other thread.

Boot the 1.4 CD.

Create a 100MB /boot partition on each of your hard drives (only one gets used, but you can use the others as backups and some BIOS' can actually boot them)

Install stage 3 to another hard drive (will be removed later) /boot will be on your first drive, everything else should be on the extra/last drive.

Set use EVMS2

emerge evms, gentoo-sources and genkernel

Note: there was a critical md patch (my bug 30124) just released a few hours ago, make sure you emerge sync today. (Oct-3-2003)

genkernel --config
select the options in the sourceforge docs

emerge grub, configure it and boot under the new kernel.

make a backup of initrd and kernel and get them into grub.

Use evmsn to create your volumes. You can see my disk layout at [url]http://12.2.225.4/evms.gif[/url]

Mount up the nice new EVMS volumes under /mnt/gentoo and pick up as if you were just starting a stage 1 install. Don't forget to install all the packages you've already installed on your 1st stage drive.

loop mount the initrd and add the files as described in the sourceforge docs.

edit the linuxrd to start up devfsd and evms_activate as well as to set /proc/sys/kernel/real-root-dev

I got bit by all the utils being in the genkernel initrd except expr... make sure you grab it. Also watch the sym-links in /lib.

If you run out of space, you'll have to edit genkernel (1.8) per my bug 29081. You can get around genkernel not setting the initial ramdisk size by using a boot time kernel parameter (I use ramdisk=8192 in grub.conf)

unmount and gzip the initrd.

Yank the extra drive and boot your nice new EVMS2 Gentoo box and have at it.

Keep the extra drive as a "boot floppy" until there is a boot CD with EVMS2.

Doing the /boot on EVMS2 probably works with lilo, but I liked the ease of pulling my /dev/sda drive and booting on a backup. From what I understand of the lilo patch, it only uses the sectors from the first drive and if that's gone, you're toast. (unconfirmed, don't kill me if I'm wrong)

Brian Freeman
Linuxboy

axa · n00b Joined: 17 Jun 2003 Posts: 51 Location: Taiwan

Hello LinuxBoy :

Very very thanks for your reply.

i'm reading ur mini howto , i'll try it as far as i can , then i'll report to u about my testing result. :roll:

Linuxboy · n00b Joined: 18 Sep 2003 Posts: 13

Any luck?

I've now got a script that takes the genkernel initrd and converts it to one that works with EVMS2. The resulting initrd is less than perfect and gives lots of boot errors but as far as I can tell none of them are critical. Give a shout if you want it.

Linuxboy

axa · n00b Joined: 17 Jun 2003 Posts: 51 Location: Taiwan

In the First, i've tried to implement/install software RAID in my new Gentoo box

if i success, i could implement/install Gentoo OS on EVMS2 smoothly..

Unfortunately, i've tried to implement it many days......
i always got Kernel panic error message when i boot from my EVMS kernel-image named "bzImage.evms"......

‧Kernel panic error message
>%------>%-----CUT-OUT>%---->%------>%
EXT3-fs:unable to read superblock
EXT2-fs:unable to read superblock
isofs_read_super: bread failed , dev=09:02 , iso_blknum=16,block=32
romfs: unable to read superblock
read_super_block: bread failed (dev09:02,block 64,size 1024)
Kernel panic: VFS:Unable to mount root fs on 09:02
------------------END-------------------
:oops:

it kernel-image (bzImage.evms) i was builded ,includes some of major kernel options as follow:

Multi-device support (RAID and LVM) --->

[*] Multiple devices driver support (RAID and LVM)
<*> RAID support
<*> RAID-0 (striping) mode
<*> RAID-1 (mirroring) mode
<*> RAID-4/RAID-5 mode
<*> Logical volume manager (LVM) support
<*> Device-mapper support (EXPERIMENTAL) (NEW)
<*> Bad Block Relocation Device Target
<*> Sparse Device Target

File systems --->

<*> Reiserfs support
[*] /dev file system support (EXPERIMENTAL)
[*] Automatically mount at boot
[ ] Debug devfs

i'm using ResierFS all of my gentoo box and my fstab and grub menu.lst as follow:
‧/etc/fstab

Linuxboy · n00b Joined: 18 Sep 2003 Posts: 13

I have devfs with automount in my kernel and it works just fine for me. I still have some unresolved devfs errors but I don't think they're serious.

/dev/mdX are the normal md devices, if you've got EVMS2 installed and used it to create these volumes, you have to use the /dev/evms/VolName devices. I'm sure you know this but I'm grasping.

I do remember reading something at the sourceforge site about evms/evmsn/evmsgui changing the device numbers of /dev/mdX devices and there being a utility to reverse the change but I can't find it today.

If you created the volumes without EVMS2, then I'm not going to be much help because I've never upgraded md to EVMS2. (only done md on RedHat and that's automagic) If you really do have pure md, then something is working right because it looks like /boot is on md0 and boot must be getting mounted.

The panic you have is similar to the one that I got when evms_activate failed to run or /proc/sys/kernel/real-root-device was not set to the output of get_dev_num /dev/evms/VolName.

The dev number at the very end of the panic is also much lower than the numbers I get from EVMS2 volumes.

I guess my only questions are: Did you create the md0/md2 devices with evms or the md utils? If you used the md utils, did you run evms[n/gui] and save the changes?

Linuxboy