LAHAYE Olivier <olivier.lah...@cea.fr> wrote:
> After trying to use my RPM on a CentOS-6.2 system, I'm facing some issues
> that are hard to fix, thus I'm asking before starting to try to make a update
> so it works on CentOS-6.2
>
> 1st of all, I've already made some fix to systemimager so it works on
> CentOS-6.2, unfortunately, I'm stuck with systemconfigurator which is not
> supported on CentOS-6.2 (kernel-2.6) and therfore disable with no equivalent
> in systemimager. Because of this, the bootloader is not written to disk after
> the imaging, and therfore, the imaged system is unable to boot.
>
> So the actual situation is the following:
> - systemimager-4.1.99.svn4568/lib/SystemImager/Server.pm:1788
> SystemConfigurator deprecated and nothing to do its job (configure and write
> bootloader, ...)
>
> - systemconfigurator-2.2.11-1/lib/SystemConfig/{Initrd/RH.pm, Boot*, ???}
> need to be fixed to have kernel 2.6+ properly handeled (initramfs instead of
> initrd, dracut instead of initrd (compatible script exist for the moment), ...
>
> So now, I need help on having the ##SYSTEMCONFIGURATOR_PRE## and
> #SYSTEMCONFIGURATOR_POST## steps working in SystemImager. Works need to be
> done on the autoinstallscript and in systemconfigurator (or equivalent).
I share your frustrations about systemconfigurator (and thus also
SystemImager) not supporting CentOS 6.x! My experiences so far agree
with yours: It's possible to tweak SystemImager to install a CentOS 6.x
image onto a SI client's hard disk, but that image is unfortunately not
bootable :-(
Unfortunately I'm unable to help you with systemconfigurator. But I can
add some observations regarding the use of SystemImager with CentOS 6.x
(we're at 6.3 now) which reflect my experimentation to date:
1. SystemImager trunk as well as older versions CANNOT build on a CentOS
6.x system because several software packages (kernel, parted) are
incompatible. The SI trunk won't even build on CentOS 5.x owing to the
gzip package :-(
2. SystemImager packages built on a CentOS 5.x system CAN be installed
correctly on CentOS 6.x SI server and golden client systems! Older
versions of SI from CentOS 5.x seem to be working just fine on CentOS
6.x, and you can use si_getimage successfully.
3. A SI CentOS 6.x SI client machine can be installed correctly from the
6.x SI server in the usual way. However, at the end of the cloning
process systemconfigurator gives some error messages, and the SI client
is unable to boot :-(
4. If the SI clients have new hardware (Intel Sandy Bridge, for
example), the SI kernel may be too old to work properly.
Related to SI, the SALI project (https://subtrac.sara.nl/oss/sali) at
SARA, Amsterdam offers a much newer kernel and initrd supporting modern
filesystems and new hardware(?).
You can replace the SI kernel/initrd with the SALI kernel/initrd when
booting SI clients, and even run your old SI .master installation
scripts! Some minor tweaks to the .master script must be performed as
documented in
https://subtrac.sara.nl/oss/sali/wiki/SaliUsage/UsingYourOldInstallScript.
It really works! Of course, the installed CentOS 6.x client still
won't boot due to systemconfigurator :-(
SALI has their own master scripts which are a lot simpler than the SI
scripts, but I think SALI hasn't been ported to CentOS 6.x yet because
1) SALI still relies upon systemconfigurator, and 2) SALI doesn't seem
to support LVM.
In conclusion, it seems to me that if you can make systemconfigurator
work correctly on CentOS 6.x, then SI and/or SALI should work as well
for installing clients that will be bootable.
A totally different cloning approach would be to use RedHat's Kickstart
- some of my colleagues have turned from SI to Kickstart already. If
you add Cobbler (http://cobbler.github.com/) on top of Kickstart you may
have quite a powerful cloning setup.
Regards,
Ole
--
Ole Holm Nielsen
Department of Physics, Technical University of Denmark
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Live Security Virtual Conference
Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and
threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions
will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware
threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/
_______________________________________________
sisuite-users mailing list
sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users
