I’m having a devil of a time getting this install to work.
Specs are above, there are 6 600GB SAS drives in the machine, set as a RAID 5 container about 2.7TB large.
Initially, I tried to install SLES11, no service pack; that wouldn’t see the drive during the partitioning stage of the install.
I’d tried two things at once, downloading and installing SLES11sp2 (going for the latest), and in the BIOS, enabling UEFI.
I was able to see the drives and create partitions after that, but I wasn’t sure which change enabled it. Not knowing much about UEFI, and being under the gun timewise to get this server up and running, I rebooted it, disabled UEFI boot, and was still able to see the drive, create modify partitions, etc…
I made two partitions:
- / is 65GB
- 2 GB for swap. (The rest of the drive is reserved for future NSS volumes and currently unpartitioned)
I went ahead with the install, but at the bootloader install portion, it errored out.
grub >setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 --force-lba (hd0.2) …etc.
Checking if “/boot/grub/stage1” exists … no
Checking if “/grub/stage1” exists … no
Error 15: File not found
grub > quit
I didn’t think I’d absolutely need UEFI and a GTP partition table since the partitions themselves are relatively small and everything here should support LBA48.
But perhaps I do? The whole UEFI and GTP thing is new to me.
This is the first we’ve ever tried using a raid container so large.
thanks…
lpphiggp wrote:
[color=blue]
I’m having a devil of a time getting this install to work.
Specs are above, there are 6 600GB SAS drives in the machine, set as a
RAID 5 container about 2.7TB large.
Initially, I tried to install SLES11, no service pack; that wouldn’t
see the drive during the partitioning stage of the install.
I’d tried two things at once, downloading and installing SLES11sp2
(going for the latest), and in the BIOS, enabling UEFI.
I was able to see the drives and create partitions after that, but I
wasn’t sure which change enabled it. Not knowing much about UEFI, and
being under the gun timewise to get this server up and running, I
rebooted it, disabled UEFI boot, and was still able to see the drive,
create modify partitions, etc…
I made two partitions:
- / is 65GB
- 2 GB for swap. (The rest of the drive is reserved for future NSS
volumes and currently unpartitioned)
I went ahead with the install, but at the bootloader install portion,
it errored out.
grub >setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 --force-lba (hd0.2) …etc.
Checking if “/boot/grub/stage1” exists … no
Checking if “/grub/stage1” exists … no
Error 15: File not found
grub > quit
I didn’t think I’d absolutely need UEFI and a GTP partition table since
the partitions themselves are relatively small and everything here
should support LBA48.
But perhaps I do? The whole UEFI and GTP thing is new to me.
This is the first we’ve ever tried using a raid container so large.[/color]
Have you seen Dell PowerEdge Systems SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11
Installation Instructions And Important Information @
ftp://ftp.dell.com/Manuals/all-products/esuprt_electronics/esuprt_software/esuprt_operating_system/novl-suse-lx-entps-srvr-11_User's%20Guide_en-us.pdf
?
Personally I’d create a small (~300MB) /boot partition as first partition,
then swap, and finally / rather than just your two partitions.
HTH.
Simon
SUSE Knowledge Partner
[/quote]
Have you seen Dell PowerEdge Systems SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11
Installation Instructions And Important Information @
ftp://ftp.dell.com/Manuals/all-products/esuprt_electronics/esuprt_software/esuprt_operating_system/novl-suse-lx-entps-srvr-11_User's%20Guide_en-us.pdf
?
Personally I’d create a small (~300MB) /boot partition as first partition,
then swap, and finally / rather than just your two partitions.
HTH.
Simon
SUSE Knowledge Partner[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the reply. I did see a TID regarding creating a separate boot partition and table using GPT, I just wasn’t clear on whether this is absolutely necessary or not. This is what’s unclear to me:
I found a document at http://www.uefi.org/learning_center/UEFI_MBR_Limits_v2.pdf that seems to suggest that hard drives larger than 2.2TB require UEFI, but I thought this conflicted with the factthat normal BIOS/LBA48 allowed for something like 144 Petabyte drives, and that OSes would be okay just so long as the partitions were smaller, like 2 TB or less. I’m not making monster sized partitions.
But apparently LBA48 only applies to IDE/ATA drives, not SCSI …! Okay, clears that up then.
Well… I followed the TID at http://www.novell.com/support/kb/doc.php?id=7003263 , I seem to have had success.
I hope this post helps someone else.
oh yeah, that worked REAL good. Stupid installation completely IGNORED the 65GB partition I had aside for the OS (/) and instead created a linux partition on the 2.6TB space I was going to use for NSS. WTH??? I’d already installed OES, and now have objects in the tree that will be probably be corrupt because I have to reinstall this whole thing from scratch.
In article lpphiggp.5smdo0@no-mx.forums.suse.com, Lpphiggp wrote:[color=blue]
I’d already installed OES, and now have objects in the tree that will be
probably be corrupt because I have to reinstall this whole thing from
scratch.
[/color]
You’ll need to treat those objects as if you had a failed server. There
are processes to handle those, though at the moment I’m only finding the
old NetWare based ones. Since the process is mostly the same, with just
the tools being a bit different, here they are to get you started, and
then pop into the OES forums for any other clean up issues
http://www.novell.com/support/kb/doc.php?id=10013083
http://www.novell.com/support/kb/doc.php?id=10011467
Andy Konecny
KonecnyConsulting.ca in Toronto
Andy’s Profiles: http://forums.novell.com/member.php?userid=75037
https://forums.suse.com/member.php?2959-konecnya
The thing that really freaks me out is that the install just ignored my partitioning scheme and did it’s own thing. I can’t even begin to fathom how that happened.
I had created (in addition to a 200MB boot part and a 2 GB swap part) a 65GB ext3 partition and mounted / there. I left the remaining 2.6 TB unpartitioned for NSS volumes.
Once I rebooted, I’d found that the install magically decided to partition the 2.6 TB partition ext3 and mount / there instead of the 65 GB partition I told it to. I can’t wrap my head around that.
If it does this again (my second install is almost complete), then … I don’t know. That’s just scary.
Just an update, this last time the partitioning held. It worked.
Now I’m having OES issues, but that’s a whole other issue.
Looks like I have to start the SLES install over again, but as I shouldn’t have to do anything to modify the partition table, hopefully, l’m permanently past this hurdle.