Re: Debuginfo repositories
On 3/15/2011 12:08, Vaclav Mocek wrote: Another question: does RHEL6 use Presto plugin and delta rpm? Not for RHN repos. -- Garrett Holmstrom
Re: install the full SL6, SL5.5 OS's and GRUB on external USB hard drive
On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 01:41:41AM -0700, William Shu wrote: I want to install the full operating systems (SL 6, SL 5.5 and some variant of ubuntu), together with grub, on an external USB hard drive. This is so I can boot from the OS's, on different machines, whenever I need to. (A kind of portable operating sytems environment. For, I seem to have issues with LiveCD/DVD on usb sticks, especially on windoze machines, etc.) I have some information here: http://www.triumf.info/wiki/DAQwiki/index.php/VME-CPU These are instructions for making USB-bootable media for VME SBCs (they have no SATA or IDE connectors - only network or USB). The instructions assume you already have a runnable OS image available - I make mine by cloning (rsync) of a running system that has similar configuration or by running the SL/RHEL installer (but some of our SBCs have only 512MB of memory, not have enough to run the SL installer). SYSLINUX/EXTLINUX is used because GRUB was observed to malfunction in funny ways, for example, boots fine if USB disk is plugged directly, but not if plugged through a USB hub. As a bonus, EXTLINUX can automatically select and boot the correct kernel depending on the type of machine. One other gotcha to remember - older versions of the SL/RHEL installer did not include the usb-storage module into the initrd, so after running the installer one got an unbootable machine. I think SL5.6 installer fixed this, but I am not sure. If not fixed, you have to take your disk to another machine and recreate the initrd manually, with forcing the inclusion of usb modules. K.O. Any things to watch out for in trying to install and use such an external USB hard drive? I already learned the hard way, for multiple OS's, to use labelled disk partitions in /etc/fstab. More generally, how is hardware mapped or handled so that a given OS on the external drive *safely* boots/reboots from different machines [of the same architecture]? Unfortunately, the only helpful sites I've found date back a long time, e.g.: http://www.brunel.ac.uk/~eesridr/extlinux.html http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=80811 and so its not clear if one has to tinker with, say, mkinitrd in more recent OS versions. Also, Troy's response in thread (Re: Only One Disk ??) is for installation USB's. (http://www.scientificlinux.org/distributions/6x/build/sites). Any help appreciated. Regards, William. -- Konstantin Olchanski Data Acquisition Systems: The Bytes Must Flow! Email: olchansk-at-triumf-dot-ca Snail mail: 4004 Wesbrook Mall, TRIUMF, Vancouver, B.C., V6T 2A3, Canada
Re: Persistent Data in SL LiveDVD on USB
Hi William On 03/15/2011 11:19 PM, William Shu wrote: Dear All, I must be missing something. I do not seem to install and retain packages on liveDVD installed on a USB stick, despite using the data persistence options on livecd-iso-to-disk, viz: # livecd-iso-to-disk --reset-mbr --overlay-size-mb 1024 \ --home-size-mb 512 \ path/SL-60-i386-2011-03-07-LiveDVD.iso \ /dev/partition name The programs livecd-tools and liveusb-creator are retained on reboot, but not the others. Also, configuration data, etc. stored in the home directory, /home/sluser, are retained. Some sample installs that disappeared (Id not matter whether I used yum, ume: $ su -c 'rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-5.noarch.rpm' $ su -c 'yum install yumex' $ su -c 'yum install xfig transfig fig2ps gv' $ su -c 'yum install ocaml ocaml-emacs ocaml-lablgl ocaml-lablgl-devel ocaml-lablgtk ocaml-lablgtk-devel ocaml-lablgtk-doc ocaml-doc' $ su -c 'yum install latex2rtf latex2html' It could be that you have spotted a bug in livecd-iso-to-disk or/and dracut. My guess that in your case overlay is not working at all. Because livecd-tools and liveusb-creator are already part of the LiveDVD and /home/sluser is retained by the home image. Can you check on the boot Live USB, if you see the overlay file mounted on a /dev/loop device? Just run losetup /dev/loop1 losetup /dev/loop2 losetup /dev/loop3 losetup /dev/loop4 losetup /dev/loop5 etc. You should see something like /dev/loop4: [0801]:5 (/overlayfs/LiveOS/overlay-XYZ-0A7F-A011) It would be nice to get some debug output from you. Could you please start the Live USB stick with boot option rdinitdebug You can also remove rhgb and quiet to see dracut debug messages when booting. After booting, the dracut debug messages should be in dmesg. Can you send me the output of dmesg | grep ^dracut Please note that overlay has some limitation: http://www.livecd.ethz.ch/usbdisk.html#limits. I have to admit that liveusb-creator and livecd-iso-to-disk are not heavily tested with data persistence on SL6. A workaround would be to use liveusb-creator from Fedora running on Windows (or Fedora), which is more tested. (sorry for recommending a tool running on Windows), see also http://www.livecd.ethz.ch/usbdisk.html Cheers, Urs
Re: install the full SL6, SL5.5 OS's and GRUB on external USB hard drive
On 03/16/2011 03:41 AM, William Shu wrote: Dear All, I want to install the full operating systems (SL 6, SL 5.5 and some variant of ubuntu), together with grub, on an external USB hard drive. This is so I can boot from the OS's, on different machines, whenever I need to. (A kind of portable operating sytems environment. For, I seem to have issues with LiveCD/DVD on usb sticks, especially on windoze machines, etc.) Any things to watch out for in trying to install and use such an external USB hard drive? I already learned the hard way, for multiple OS's, to use labelled disk partitions in /etc/fstab. More generally, how is hardware mapped or handled so that a given OS on the external drive *safely* boots/reboots from different machines [of the same architecture]? Unfortunately, the only helpful sites I've found date back a long time, e.g.: http://www.brunel.ac.uk/~eesridr/extlinux.html http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=80811 and so its not clear if one has to tinker with, say, mkinitrd in more recent OS versions. Also, Troy's response in thread (Re: Only One Disk ??) is for installation USB's. (http://www.scientificlinux.org/distributions/6x/build/sites). Any help appreciated. Regards, William. Hi, I have a full distro on a USB stick. It's currently Fedora 13 instead of SL6, but the procedure is the exact same. Do a normal install with the USB hard drive plugged in and selected as the main hard drive, and with all your partitions on it. The only thing you have to be careful of is where grub is put, and what order grub thinks the drives are. http://www.scientificlinux.org/distributions/6x/installing/boot.loader.configuration.html On SL6, be sure to select Change device and make sure your USB drive is marked as the First BIOS drive. Then make sure it's set to install the boot loader on the MBR of our USB hard drive. http://www.scientificlinux.org/distributions/6x/installing/large/boot.loader.5.png I won't comment on putting multiple Full Installs on your USB drive, because I only have one on mine. Troy -- __ Troy Dawson daw...@fnal.gov (630)840-6468 Fermilab ComputingDivision/SCF/FEF/SLSMS Group __
Oracle hardware woes
Hi All, Just a little tale of woe that may be of interest to those of you running SL on Sun kit. About 18mths ago we bought a couple of X4150s each with a J4400 storage array attached. Only populated 12 of the 24 drive bays in each of the J4400s at the time of purchase. Time passes, grants come in, storage needs grow Approach Oracle reseller to get quote about getting additional drives, only to discover that not only did Oracle EOL the J4400 in Dec 2010, they also EOLed accessories so it is no longer possible to get the drives. EOLing the array itself is fair enough, but the drives too, what a way to treat customers that have invested in their products! Apparently this is the case with quite a lot of older Sun hardware not just the J4400. cheers, Ronnie -- = Name: Dr Ronnie Wallace Institution: University of Strathclyde Department: Mathematics and Statistics Address: Livingstone Tower, 26 Richmond Street, Glasgow, Scotland, UK, G1 1XH Telephone: +44-(0)141-548-3656 FAX: +44-(0)141-548-3345 e-mail: r.wall...@strath.ac.uk = The University of Strathclyde is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, number SC015263. =
Re: Oracle hardware woes
On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 02:46:32PM +, Ronnie Wallace wrote: Hi All, Just a little tale of woe that may be of interest to those of you running SL on Sun kit. About 18mths ago we bought a couple of X4150s each with a J4400 storage array attached. Only populated 12 of the 24 drive bays in each of the J4400s at the time of purchase. Time passes, grants come in, storage needs grow Approach Oracle reseller to get quote about getting additional drives, only to discover that not only did Oracle EOL the J4400 in Dec 2010, they also EOLed accessories so it is no longer possible to get the drives. EOLing the array itself is fair enough, but the drives too, what a way to treat customers that have invested in their products! Apparently this is the case with quite a lot of older Sun hardware not just the J4400. If you like Solaris you might check out Nexenta. Runs great on SuperMicro hardware (or even Dell + MD3000's). We are a fairly big Sun shop, but the decision to go with more and more Dell/IBM/HP is becoming easier and easier -- especially for running Linux. Also, Solaris is real expensive on non-Oracle hardware ($1K/yr for Premiere support for 1-2 sockets -- goes up after that). cheers, Ronnie Ray
Re: install the full SL6, SL5.5 OS's and GRUB on external USB hard drive
On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 09:45:13AM -0500, Troy Dawson wrote: I have a full distro on a USB stick. It's currently Fedora 13 instead of SL6, but the procedure is the exact same. Do a normal install with the USB hard drive plugged in and selected as the main hard drive, and with all your partitions on it. The only thing you have to be careful of is where grub is put, and what order grub thinks the drives are. In my experience, trying to USB-boot Linux using SL5 GRUB is futile. GRUB gets hopelessly confused by the ordering of BIOS hard drives - which seems to change between cold and warm reboots. BTW, on the machines where I looked into it, one cannot select USB hard drive as the main hard drive on a permanent basis - if you ever boot the machine with the USB drive accidentally unplugged or powered down, I see BIOS settings reverting back to whatever crazy random order you use and GRUB will fail to boot until you go back to the BIOS setup screen and change the settings. The best I can tell, the root of the problem is with GRUB insisting on booting from disk 0 (or whatever number is specified in grub.conf) instead of continuing to use the boot disk selected by the BIOS (as SYSLINUX/EXTLINUX seems to do). This strategy of booting from BIOS disk number selected in some config file may have worked well in the days of hardwired primary master IDE disks and mostly continues to function with hardwired SATA disks (i.e. fails on ASUS A8N-E mobos where ordering of SATA ports by BIOS and Linux is not the same), but completely makes no sense with dynamically assigned USB disks (if I have 2 USB disks, which one is disk 0? Yes, it is in the USB enumeration order, so it is deterinistic, but if I plug in a 3rd USB disk, USB enumeration order may change and GRUB will not boot). Anyhow, according to http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/ GRUB has been abandoned, so why are we still using it?!? In contrast, SYSLINUX/EXTLINUX/PXELINUX is still in active development. (Yes, there is GRUB-2, if you can find it, but SL5 is not using it). K.O. http://www.scientificlinux.org/distributions/6x/installing/boot.loader.configuration.html On SL6, be sure to select Change device and make sure your USB drive is marked as the First BIOS drive. Then make sure it's set to install the boot loader on the MBR of our USB hard drive. http://www.scientificlinux.org/distributions/6x/installing/large/boot.loader.5.png -- Konstantin Olchanski Data Acquisition Systems: The Bytes Must Flow! Email: olchansk-at-triumf-dot-ca Snail mail: 4004 Wesbrook Mall, TRIUMF, Vancouver, B.C., V6T 2A3, Canada
security repo failing download?
Hello, Trying a completely new install of Scienficiclinux 6 from netboot, using ftp.scientificlinux.org/linux/scientific/6x/x86_64/os as the url source, and selecting sl-security as one of the repo sources - I get this error: Unable to read package metadata. This may be due to a missing repodata directory. Please ensure that your install tree has been correctly generated. failure: repodata/filelists.sqlite.bz2 from sl-security: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try. It then gives me the option to Exit Installer or Retry. Clicking on Retry gave the same error. I have successfully installed without selecting sl-security as a repo source for install. Thanks, Chris
Re: No success installing ATI Radeon HD5970 driver
Hi Phil- I VERY much appreciate your suggestion and help. Sadly, these repo options didn't solve my problem. Everything installed correctly (i.e., without error and a clean install report). However, I was unable to make any changes using the SL default 'display' GUI. I noted that elsewhere in the repo documentation (which I hastily ignored due to the excitement over your solution), the HD 5970 series was not included in the list of supported devices. Am I missing something completely? I do have experience with Linux installations (not an expert by any means). And, specifically, have fought with display adaptor installations endlessly. Probably one of the most frustrating aspect of getting a new system up and running. Thanks again for any further guidance you can provide. Regards, Wil On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 2:07 PM, Phil Perry p...@pendre.co.uk wrote: On 10/03/11 17:28, Wil Irwin wrote: Hi- I have tried multiple times to install the driver using the GUI installer and the subsequent steps. Installation appears to proceed and I can finish with aticonfig --initial. However, the driver doesn't appear to be applied. Scrolling down any webpage or document is very constipated, and dragging windows across the screen is also extremely constipated. In addition the GUI for Catalyst Control Panel will allow resolution, etc. changes, but they are not applied after a re-boot. I have also tried the command-prompt based install, with exactly the same results. I'm using the 11.2 driver released on 02/15/2011. I should also note the same problem (or at least similar) happened with SL5 and Ubuntu 10.x) The errors shown for fgl_glxgears, fglrxinfo, and glxinfo. uname -r; and the xorg.conf file are listed below. I am running SL6 with all updates and packages installed. Any suggestions would be VERY MUCH appreciated. Thanks, Wil Hi Wil, Can I suggest you try the ATI driver package for EL6 from elrepo.org: http://elrepo.org http://elrepo.org/tiki/kmod-fglrx I believe the elrepo.org repository might already be installed under SL6. Once you have elrepo installed, you can install the ATI drivers with: yum --enablerepo=elrepo install kmod-fglrx and if you need 32-bit application support on x86_64 then you should also install the fglrx-x11-drv-32bit package too. *Before* you install the elrepo packaged drivers, please uninstall the previous ATI installer drivers: sh /usr/share/ati/fglrx-uninstall.sh At the moment elrepo.org only has the 10.12 drivers for SL6 but I'll do my best to get those updated soon.
Re: No success installing ATI Radeon HD5970 driver
On 16/03/11 20:02, Wil Irwin wrote: Hi Phil- I VERY much appreciate your suggestion and help. Sadly, these repo options didn't solve my problem. Hmm :-( Everything installed correctly (i.e., without error and a clean install report). However, I was unable to make any changes using the SL default 'display' GUI. I noted that elsewhere in the repo documentation (which I hastily ignored due to the excitement over your solution), the HD 5970 series was not included in the list of supported devices. I'm really unsure which models are supported by which driver - I can't seem to find this information in the ATI documentation. The list of supported devices in the elrepo.org documentation is for the older legacy driver, not the current release. All I can tell you is that when I go to the ATI driver download page, and enter your device, it says the current (11.2) driver supports your card. I have no idea when support was added. Most documentation only states that current cards are supported by the current driver. Am I missing something completely? I do have experience with Linux installations (not an expert by any means). And, specifically, have fought with display adaptor installations endlessly. Probably one of the most frustrating aspect of getting a new system up and running. Thanks again for any further guidance you can provide. I'm not an ATI user so it's difficult for me to offer much in the way of informed advice. Do you see any errors in your Xorg logs or anything else useful to go on? Reading back through the thread, about the only thing I can think to check is regarding your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. By default, SL6 doesn't have an xorg.conf file. The elrepo.org packages will create a suitable xorg.conf file during the installation of the drivers. If you've already created one then the elrepo.org package will try to use that but if it's broken then it's not going to work. Thus I would suggest uninstalling the elrepo.org packages, make sure you (backup if necessary, and) delete /etc/X11/xorg.conf if it still exists and then reinstall the packages. Just a guess really.
Re: SL 6.0 Java plugin
I missed the significance of this the other week when it came up and Troy said Yes, downloading the jre or jdk from java.com (oracle) is the prefered way of getting the java browser plugin. SL5 used to distribute the Sun/Oracle jre package - did something change such that this is no longer possible with SL6? Graham -- - Graham Allan - I.T. Manager - al...@physics.umn.edu - (612) 624-5040 School of Physics and Astronomy - University of Minnesota -
Re: Persistent Data in SL LiveDVD on USB
Thank you very much Urs. Below are the requested outputs: (A) for losetup; and (B) for dracut. It seems the overlay is not being found! On a related matter, you say livecd-tools and liveusb-creator are part of the live iso's, but I had to yum install them before I could use them in making the USB! Regards, William. A) Output using losetup /dev/loop[0-7] --- [sluser@livecd ~]$ dir /dev/loop* /dev/loop0 /dev/loop2 /dev/loop4 /dev/loop6 /dev/loop1 /dev/loop3 /dev/loop5 /dev/loop7 [sluser@livecd ~]$ su [root@livecd sluser]# losetup /dev/loop1 /dev/loop1: [0700]:2 (/squashfs.osmin/osmin) [root@livecd sluser]# losetup /dev/loop2 /dev/loop2: [0811]:4 (/dev/.initramfs/live/LiveOS/squashfs.img) [root@livecd sluser]# losetup /dev/loop3 /dev/loop3: [0702]:3 (/squashfs/LiveOS/ext3fs.img) [root@livecd sluser]# losetup /dev/loop4 /dev/loop4: [0001]:6472 (/overlay) [root@livecd sluser]# losetup /dev/loop5 /dev/loop5: [0811]:5 (/mnt/live/LiveOS/home.img) [root@livecd sluser]# losetup /dev/loop6 loop: can't get info on device /dev/loop6: No such device or address [root@livecd sluser]# losetup /dev/loop7 loop: can't get info on device /dev/loop7: No such device or address [root@livecd sluser]# B) output from dmesg | grep ^dracut - dracut: + mkdir /dev/shm dracut: + mkdir /dev/pts dracut: + mount -t devpts -o gid=5,mode=620 devpts /dev/pts dracut: + mount -t tmpfs tmpfs /dev/shm dracut: + udevadm --version dracut: + UDEVVERSION=147 dracut: + source_conf /etc/conf.d dracut: + local f dracut: + [ /etc/conf.d ] dracut: + [ -d //etc/conf.d ] dracut: + return dracut: + getarg rdbreak=cmdline dracut: + set +x dracut: + return 1 dracut: + source_all cmdline dracut: + local f dracut: + [ cmdline ] dracut: + [ -d /cmdline ] dracut: + [ -e /cmdline/01parse-kernel.sh ] dracut: + . /cmdline/01parse-kernel.sh dracut: + getargs rdloaddriver= dracut: + set +x dracut: + return 1 dracut: dracut-004-32.el6 dracut: + [ -e /cmdline/01version.sh ] dracut: + . /cmdline/01version.sh dracut: + [ -f dracut-004-32.el6 ] dracut: + vinfo dracut: + read line dracut: + info dracut-004-32.el6 dracut: + check_quiet dracut: + [ -z ] dracut: + DRACUT_QUIET=yes dracut: + getarg rdinfo dracut: + set +x dracut: + return 1 dracut: + getarg quiet dracut: + set +x dracut: + return 1 dracut: + DRACUT_QUIET=yes dracut: + echo 6dracut: dracut-004-32.el6 dracut: + [ yes != yes ] dracut: + read line dracut: + unset i dracut: + [ -e /cmdline/10parse-resume.sh ] dracut: + . /cmdline/10parse-resume.sh dracut: + getarg resume= dracut: + set +x dracut: + return 1 dracut: + resume= dracut: + unset resume dracut: + [ -e /cmdline/10parse-root-opts.sh ] dracut: + . /cmdline/10parse-root-opts.sh dracut: + getarg root= dracut: + set +x dracut: + return 0 dracut: + root=live:UUID=4C04-9372 dracut: + getarg rootflags= dracut: + set +x dracut: + return 1 dracut: + rflags= dracut: + getarg rw dracut: + set +x dracut: + return 0 dracut: + rflags=rw dracut: + getarg rootfstype= dracut: + set +x dracut: + return 0 dracut: + fstype=vfat dracut: + [ -z vfat ] dracut: + [ -e /cmdline/20parse-blacklist.sh ] dracut: + . /cmdline/20parse-blacklist.sh dracut: + getargs rdblacklist= dracut: + set +x dracut: + return 1 dracut: + [ -e /cmdline/20parse-i18n.sh ] dracut: + . /cmdline/20parse-i18n.sh dracut: + mkdir -p /etc/sysconfig dracut: + inst_key_val KEYBOARDTYPE /etc/sysconfig/keyboard dracut: + local value dracut: + getarg KEYBOARDTYPE dracut: + set +x dracut: + return 1 dracut: + value= dracut: + [ -n ] dracut: + inst_key_val KEYTABLE /etc/sysconfig/keyboard dracut: + local value dracut: + getarg KEYTABLE dracut: + set +x dracut: + return 1 dracut: + value= dracut: + [ -n ] dracut: + inst_key_val SYSFONT /etc/sysconfig/i18n dracut: + local value dracut: + getarg SYSFONT dracut: + set +x dracut: + return 1 dracut: + value= dracut: + [ -n ] dracut: + inst_key_val SYSFONTACM /etc/sysconfig/i18n dracut: + local value dracut: + getarg SYSFONTACM dracut: + set +x dracut: + return 1 dracut: + value= dracut: + [ -n ] dracut: + inst_key_val UNIMAP /etc/sysconfig/i18n dracut: + local value dracut: + getarg UNIMAP dracut: + set +x dracut: + return 1 dracut: + value= dracut: + [ -n ] dracut: + inst_key_val LANG /etc/sysconfig/i18n dracut: + local value dracut: + getarg LANG dracut: + set +x dracut: + return 0 dracut: + value=en_US.utf8 dracut: + [ -n en_US.utf8 ] dracut: + printf %s=%sn LANG en_US.utf8 dracut: + [ -f /etc/sysconfig/i18n ] dracut: + . /etc/sysconfig/i18n dracut: + LANG=en_US.utf8 dracut: + export LANG dracut: + [ -e /cmdline/30parse-crypt.sh ] dracut: + . /cmdline/30parse-crypt.sh dracut: + getarg rd_NO_LUKS dracut: rd_NO_LUKS: removing cryptoluks activation dracut: + set +x dracut: + return 0 dracut: + info rd_NO_LUKS: removing cryptoluks activation dracut: + check_quiet dracut: + [ -z yes ] dracut: + echo 6dracut: rd_NO_LUKS: removing cryptoluks activation dracut: + [ yes != yes ]
