Sat, 28 Oct 2006

i386 d-i image for Sarge... Now supports RAID 0/1/5 installation

I was trying to port RAID handlings to Sarge Debian-Installer for these days. Although this is not enough solid level, here (sarge-custom-1028) is a result.

  • Adopt kernel 2.6.19rc1.
  • Adopt madduck's backported mdadm and debconf.
  • Added rescue mode. By using "rescue" at the boot prompt, you can mount the preconfigured disk and do your work at chroot environment.
  • Many people have wanted this... Now this version supports RAID 0/1/5 and LVM.
  • preseed will work. (not tested well)

I know there is a problem on the machines have Intel parallel ATA controller and connect a disk or CD to it. Maybe other PATA controllers also.

Since 2.6.19, PATA controllers are partially migrated into the SCSI framework. Because Debian-Installer treats Intel controller as SCSI by loading libata and ata_piix firster than piix, connected disks will be detected as /dev/sd*. On the other hand, initrd (udev?) after GRUB will load piix at the first... Disks will be detected as /dev/hd*.

Temporary solution is to make initrd to force loading libata and ata_piix at the beginning.

  1. Progress installation until GRUB installation step.
  2. Push Alt+F2 to go to the shell.
  3. Add modules to load and rebuild initrd as following:
    chroot /target
    echo "libata" >> /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
    echo "ata_piix" >> /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
    update-initramfs -u -k 2.6.19-rc1-1-486
    exit
    
  4. Push Alt+F1 and finish the installation.

Another solution is to replace /etc/fstab to use /dev/hd* style.

At this moment I'm trying to build amd64 version with kernel 2.6.18 also... But I haven't succeeded yet by strange udev problem.