AutoYaST Installation fails due to LVM configuration

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server SLES Install-Boot
1

PROBLEM:
When installing via an AutoYaST setup file the partitioning portion of
the setup fails when trying to allocate the LVM scheme I am using.

DETAILS:
PXE Server + AutoYaST profile
The installation works fine if I setup a standard non-LVM or a
standard-LVM setup. So for all those reading this there is nothing wrong
with
the PXE Server or any of my non AutoYaST profile settings.

The AutoYaST XML file that I am using was generated after an
installation of “ServerA” and I am attempting to re-install to “ServerA”
using this same XML.
So, there should be no issues regarding disk since there are no changes
to the system between the successful installation and the re-install.

I know what the issue is just not how to fix it.

BACKGROUND:
We are a very heavily virtualized shop and as such SAN backend storage
is highly utilized. We found some time ago that disk alignment would be
key to lowering the SAN I/O utilization since we have 1000’s of
virtualized servers. So, during my rebuilds I was tasked with making
this happen.

Also, since our systems change a lot we leverage LVM extensively.
Instead of manually offsetting partitions to make them aligned.
If you take say /dev/sdb and assign the entire drive to an LVM Volume
Group and then create your LV’s the disk is automatically aligned since
you are not creating
a /dev/sdb1 that has a partition offset that will need to be aligned.

After adopting this method our performance on the SAN went up due to
less utilization and lower writes due to mis-aligned disk. Also the
system performance increased locally using this method. However, now
that I am looking to deploy this to all our systems during a re-build I
find that I am having issues with AutoYaST.

It gives me the error: -A logical volume with the requested size could
not be created-

Steps:

  1. I simplified the installation by doing a standard build with normal
    partitions and using the LVM scheme described above on an additional
    disk with a mount to /test
  2. Duplicated 1 but made the LV that was inside the VG 1/2 the size of
    the available disk
  3. Imported the autoinstall.xml into the Configurator and manually set
    the additional disk like described
    -this does work but it only works because when YaST is running it
    automatically creates /dev/sdb1 even though I did not specify it
  4. Searched the web but have had no joy
  5. Opened a support ticket with Novell (no help so far)

Thanks

–SLES 11 SP1 is the version I am installing

–
ackwire

ackwire’s Profile: http://forums.novell.com/member.php?userid=88534
View this thread: http://forums.novell.com/showthread.php?t=450182

2

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