[sisuite-users] how to disable tmpfs staging?
Hello all, I am setting up our university lab machines to image via system imager. The image is around 7 GB, and on every attempt to install the image, I end up running out of RAM (2 GB) on each client machine. I am running system imager 4.1.6, from the apt repository on Ubuntu 10.04 amd64. I am using the default rsync mechanism, and using netboot to initiate installs. I have set option-144 to n in my dhcp server (which is separate to my image server), and have passed TMPFS_STAGING=no as a kernel boot parameter, either of which I believe should disable tmpfs staging. I also believe that tmpfs staging is meant to be disabled by default, though the docs are somewhat fuzzy on that particular issue. Is there anything I am likely to have done wrong which is causing tmpfs to be on in all cases? And anything I can do to remedy this? I am happy to post configuration/logs/etc. if it will be of any help. Thanks, -- Tristam MacDonald http://swiftcoder.wordpress.com/ -- This SF.net email is sponsored by Sprint What will you do first with EVO, the first 4G phone? Visit sprint.com/first -- http://p.sf.net/sfu/sprint-com-first___ sisuite-users mailing list sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users
Re: [sisuite-users] how to disable tmpfs staging?
On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 12:53 AM, Brian Elliott Finley br...@thefinleys.com wrote: What you're doing should prevent tmpfs staging. And yes -- it is off by default. Can you provide the output of df -k from the console of a failed autoinstall client? Thanks, -Brian The output from df -k, which seems to indicate that it never mounted the disk partitions: Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on rootfs 1028604 1015228 13376 99% / /dev/root 15540 15540 0 100% /old_root tmpfs 1028604 1015228 13376 99% / devpts 1028604 164 1028440 0% /dev/pts tmpfs 1028604 1015228 13376 99% /dev/.static/dev udev 1028604 164 1028440 0% /dev Also the output of fdisk -l, which indicates that it did create all of the partitions successfully: Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 1600 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19452 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 608 4881787 83 Linux Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary /dev/sda2 * 608 3040 19530273+ 83 Linux /dev/sda3 3040 4255 9765625 83 Linux /dev/sda4 4256 19452 122069902+ 83 Linux My partition layout is somewhat unorthodox: 5GB swap, followed by 20GB /, 10 GB /tmp and 115 GB /data. All of the above except for / are empty, but could the swap-first layout be confusing things? Thanks, -- Tristam MacDonald http://swiftcoder.wordpress.com/ -- This SF.net email is sponsored by Sprint What will you do first with EVO, the first 4G phone? Visit sprint.com/first -- http://p.sf.net/sfu/sprint-com-first ___ sisuite-users mailing list sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users
Re: [sisuite-users] how to disable tmpfs staging?
On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 12:51 PM, Brian Elliott Finley br...@thefinleys.com wrote: Tristam, Are you using ext4? If so, I bet that's why. I'm in the process of adding support for ext4 and grub2, but its not there yet. Right you are - I am imaging an ubuntu 10.04 box, so ext4 and grub2 by default. I just tested switching to ext3, and the imaging appears to be proceeding perfectly, so I will mess with downgrading grub in the morning. Thanks, -- Tristam MacDonald http://swiftcoder.wordpress.com/ -- This SF.net email is sponsored by Sprint What will you do first with EVO, the first 4G phone? Visit sprint.com/first -- http://p.sf.net/sfu/sprint-com-first ___ sisuite-users mailing list sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users
Re: [sisuite-users] how to disable tmpfs staging?
On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 3:00 AM, Bas van der Vlies b...@sara.nl wrote: If you want ext4 and grub2 support. You can can grab the kernel/initrd from https://subtrac.sara.nl/oss/sali to replace the kernel/initrd that your are know using. I saw the SALI kernel and gave it a spin, but it seems to take a different set of parameters, and I haven't been able to figure out which parameter I am feeding wrong. With the default systemimager configuration, it boots fine, rsyncs the script directory successfully, and then errors out with 'couldn't find script'. Any idea how I pass it the image/script name? -- Tristam MacDonald http://swiftcoder.wordpress.com/ -- This SF.net email is sponsored by Sprint What will you do first with EVO, the first 4G phone? Visit sprint.com/first -- http://p.sf.net/sfu/sprint-com-first ___ sisuite-users mailing list sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users
Re: [sisuite-users] how to disable tmpfs staging?
On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 7:40 AM, Bas van der Vlies b...@sara.nl wrote: On 21-07-10 13:34, Bas van der Vlies wrote: You have to supply the scriptname parameter ;-). Excellent, one more hurdle overcome! There is also an example master script that use GRUB2. We expect a partition for grub2, see: * https://subtrac.sara.nl/oss/sali/browser/trunk/example/masterscript.new and search for grub2 I am a little confused how the master scripts work. Do I manually edit (having made a backup copy) my image-name.master script to include those features, or is there a way to modify systemimager to generate a master script which works like that? -- Tristam MacDonald http://swiftcoder.wordpress.com/ -- This SF.net email is sponsored by Sprint What will you do first with EVO, the first 4G phone? Visit sprint.com/first -- http://p.sf.net/sfu/sprint-com-first ___ sisuite-users mailing list sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users
Re: [sisuite-users] how to disable tmpfs staging?
On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 11:14 AM, Tristam MacDonald swiftco...@gmail.com wrote: I am a little confused how the master scripts work. Do I manually edit (having made a backup copy) my image-name.master script to include those features, or is there a way to modify systemimager to generate a master script which works like that? Having assumed that I manually create the master script at this point, I have been able to create something that gets most of the way. Still working on getting a valid grub config in place post imaging. In case someone else is trying to use Ubuntu 10.04 with the SALI kernel in the future, take note of the following: - Ubuntu does not use a separate grub partition by default, so you need to make one - Ubuntu identifies partitions by UUIDs by default, so edit your /etc/fstab to use partition names instead - Ubuntu uses UUIDs in grub by default, so disable that in /etc/default/grub -- Tristam MacDonald http://swiftcoder.wordpress.com/ -- This SF.net email is sponsored by Sprint What will you do first with EVO, the first 4G phone? Visit sprint.com/first -- http://p.sf.net/sfu/sprint-com-first ___ sisuite-users mailing list sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users
Re: [sisuite-users] How can I see the System Imager error message?
Did you try shift+pageup to use the kernel's built-in scrolling capabilities? On Aug 3, 2010, at 15:45, Patrick Nolan patrick.no...@stanford.edu wrote: I've been banging my head against a problem installing OSCAR for a couple of weeks. The network boot phase seems to be crashing because of a System Imager error, but I can't tell what type of error. The net boot begins OK and runs a downloaded kernel. Then a lot of stuff scrolls by quickly. It ends with a page which begins, Your autoinstall has failed. You can use the shell prompt to try and see what happened. This is followed by a page of advice, which causes all previous messages to scroll off the console. Of course, there is no shell prompt, nor do the alt-f1 or other keys do anything. It's just hung. I tried capturing the boot messages by echoing them out a serial port. (The AMI BIOS allows that.) It works up to a point, but the output quits when the kernel boots. What can I do? -- The Palm PDK Hot Apps Program offers developers who use the Plug-In Development Kit to bring their C/C++ apps to Palm for a share of $1 Million in cash or HP Products. Visit us here for more details: http://p.sf.net/sfu/dev2dev-palm ___ sisuite-users mailing list sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users -- The Palm PDK Hot Apps Program offers developers who use the Plug-In Development Kit to bring their C/C++ apps to Palm for a share of $1 Million in cash or HP Products. Visit us here for more details: http://p.sf.net/sfu/dev2dev-palm ___ sisuite-users mailing list sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users
Re: [sisuite-users] How can I see the System Imager error message?
On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 3:56 PM, Patrick Nolan patrick.no...@stanford.eduwrote: Tristam MacDonald wrote: Did you try shift+pageup to use the kernel's built-in scrolling capabilities? Yes. That's one of the things mentioned in the page of advice. There doesn't seem to be a kernel running at that point. Nothing gets any sort of response except the Reset button on the front panel. There certainly is a full kernel running by the time that failure message is printed, so it sounds like you have an actual hard crash on your hands. I tried capturing the boot messages by echoing them out a serial port. (The AMI BIOS allows that.) It works up to a point, but the output quits when the kernel boots. Did you also tell your *kernel* to output over the console? If my memory serves correctly, you need to add something like console=ttyS0,57600 to the APPEND line in your pxelinux.cfg/whatever. -- Tristam MacDonald http://swiftcoder.wordpress.com/ -- The Palm PDK Hot Apps Program offers developers who use the Plug-In Development Kit to bring their C/C++ apps to Palm for a share of $1 Million in cash or HP Products. Visit us here for more details: http://p.sf.net/sfu/dev2dev-palm___ sisuite-users mailing list sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users
Re: [sisuite-users] Booting from SALI, but install script doesn't run, fails when run manually
On Aug 16, 2010, at 5:07 PM, Chris Pepper pep...@reppep.com wrote: With SALI our nodes connect to the imageserver and fetch scripts, but they do not actually install. It's a bit confusing -- the VGA console shows the correct hostname (c15), runs 99all.harmless_example_script, then says No script defined, opening console, write_variables, and Starting console You need to pass the SCRIPTNAME=whatever option to the kernel. See my thread about tmpfs a few weeks ago - about halfway through is a detailed description. -- Tristam MacDonald http://swiftcoder.wordpress.com Sent from my iPad -- This SF.net email is sponsored by Make an app they can't live without Enter the BlackBerry Developer Challenge http://p.sf.net/sfu/RIM-dev2dev ___ sisuite-users mailing list sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users
Re: [sisuite-users] Booting from SALI, but install script doesn't run, fails when run manually
On Aug 16, 2010, at 7:24 PM, Chris Pepper pep...@reppep.com wrote: Tristam MacDonald wrote: On Aug 16, 2010, at 5:07 PM, Chris Pepper pep...@reppep.com mailto:pep...@reppep.com wrote: With SALI our nodes connect to the imageserver and fetch scripts, but they do not actually install. It's a bit confusing -- the VGA console shows the correct hostname (c15), runs 99all.harmless_example_script, then says No script defined, opening console, write_variables, and Starting console You need to pass the SCRIPTNAME=whatever option to the kernel. See my thread about tmpfs a few weeks ago - about halfway through is a detailed description. Tristam, I'm pretty sure our older installation of 4.0.2 detected this automatically from cluster.xml, but I will try tomorrow. Systemimager does this fine, but it is listed as a current limitation of SALI on the webpage (https://subtrac.sara.nl/oss/sali). Any ideas why parted is choking when I run the script manually? Despite it being stated several places that SALI supports default system imager scripts, I didn't find that to be the case on our Dell cluster. I ended up writing a custom script using the newer 'partition' command, since I decided to support ext4 and grub2 as well. -- Tristam MacDonald http://swiftcoder.wordpress.com Sent from my iPad -- This SF.net email is sponsored by Make an app they can't live without Enter the BlackBerry Developer Challenge http://p.sf.net/sfu/RIM-dev2dev ___ sisuite-users mailing list sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users
Re: [sisuite-users] Partitioning problem with SI 4.0.2 SALI 1.3.2
On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 3:50 PM, Chris Pepper pep...@reppep.com wrote: Tristam, Last month, I made the minimal changes to the SI master script (as suggested on this list) to make it work with SALI. I have considered using the new SALI masterscript, but not tried it yet. Your suggestions look a bit more radical, and I haven't looked in the SALI documentation to find out what those verbs mean yet. If possible, I'd like to patch the SI script, since I believe it's *almost* okay (it worked on PE1950s last month). If that won't fly, I'll test the SALI replacement. Is there any documentation for your suggested modifications? Did you pull them from a public source that I can read? The (semi-complete) official documentation is on the SALI wiki ( https://subtrac.sara.nl/oss/sali/wiki/SaliUsage/Functions). Most of it I pulled from the various SALI-related posts on the mailing list, however. I realise you would prefer to continue using the old-style script, but the reason I recommend the newer method is that SALI-style functions result in a much cleaner script that is far easier to read and maintain. -- Tristam MacDonald http://swiftcoder.wordpress.com/ -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev___ sisuite-users mailing list sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users
Re: [sisuite-users] Not seeing boel messages on serial console
On Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 7:23 PM, Steven A. DuChene linux-clust...@mindspring.com wrote: The following messages about grub appear in the console log file: 2011-7-13 15:7:36 [Boot::Grub :: Line 132] grub supports --no-floppy argument. 2011-7-13 15:7:36 [Boot::Grub :: Line 107] Grub executable set to: /sbin/grub-install. 2011-7-13 15:7:36 [Boot::Grub :: Line 151] bootloader = /sbin/grub-install 2011-7-13 15:7:36 [Boot::Grub :: Line 338] mount: /boot 2011-7-13 15:7:36 [Boot::Grub :: Line 338] mount: / 2011-7-13 15:7:36 [Boot::Grub :: Line 368] calling /sbin/grub-install --no-floppy --recheck UUID=0b8f2f84-5a03-4a80-b853-a624d496e5e7 Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time. Format of install_device not recognized. INSTALL_DEVICE can be a GRUB device name or a system device filename. Has anyone seen this before? Is there someway I can eliminate this --recheck option from being used with grub-install? Or is it that grub just does not like the UUID=0b8f2f84-5a03-4a80-b853-a624d496e5e7 device it is given? If I could figure out where the call was being made I would try to fix it. I tried inserting a hard-coded grub-install line into a couple of different places in the autoinstall master script but it seems no matter where I put ti the script complains that the path is not correct (it cannot find the executable). -- Steven DuChene My understanding is that the UUIDs are specific to a particular device. In other words, unless you are imaging to the machine which served as the golden client, the UUID will not match the device, and the grub install will fail. You can work around this by disabling the use of UUIDs by your OS. That generally means editing your /etc/fstab to replace UUIDs with device paths, and editing your /etc/default/grub to disable UUID support. -- Tristam MacDonald System Administrator, Suffolk University Math CS Department -- AppSumo Presents a FREE Video for the SourceForge Community by Eric Ries, the creator of the Lean Startup Methodology on Lean Startup Secrets Revealed. This video shows you how to validate your ideas, optimize your ideas and identify your business strategy. http://p.sf.net/sfu/appsumosfdev2dev___ sisuite-users mailing list sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users
Re: [sisuite-users] si-suite site down?
On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 9:56 AM, Jan Groenewald j...@aims.ac.za wrote: Can you perhaps describe more extensively the relation between systemimager and SALI and your best guess as to the future developments over the next few years? And perhaps a specific note on the current status in SI and SALI of grub2, ext4, and systemconfigurator? Regards, Jan Until the devs have time to weight in, I'll give you the perspective of someone using them on a daily basis: SALI is a drop-in replacement for the default systemimager boot image (kernel and initrd). It has fairly good support for grub2 and ext4, and a vastly simplified command set for writing system imager install scripts. The rest of the systemimager suite you use as before. We use systemimager + SALI to image a lab of Ubuntu 11.04 machines, which works pretty much out of the box. The only caveat is that neither component has support for Debian's new disk UUIDs, so monkeying with your /etc/fstab and grub config may be required. -- Tristam MacDonald System Administrator, Suffolk University Math CS Department -- Virtualization Cloud Management Using Capacity Planning Cloud computing makes use of virtualization - but cloud computing also focuses on allowing computing to be delivered as a service. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51521223/___ sisuite-users mailing list sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users
Re: [sisuite-users] si-suite site down?
On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 5:55 AM, Bas van der Vlies b...@sara.nl wrote: Tristam, Do you mean that the 'blkid` command is not supported in busybox or are you missing something else? For our installions we use LABEL functionality, but we must also generate our /etc/fstab file. It is on out to do list to generate the fstab file. To be honest, I never tried to generate the fstab, since switching the fstab over to old-fashioned device references is trivial. The grub2 config is a whole lot more troublesome, and it's very poorly documented how to write a non-UUID grub config without manually overwriting the output of update-grub. -- Tristam MacDonald System Administrator, Suffolk University Math CS Department http://swiftcoder.wordpress.com/ -- Try before you buy = See our experts in action! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-dev2___ sisuite-users mailing list sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users
[sisuite-users] SALI + VMWare ESXi
Has anyone tried using SALI to boot a VM instance running under WMWare's ESXi? I'm getting the following output when the boot process fails, and I assume it has something to do with SALI not recognising the particular virtual ethernet adapter: s*tart_network* *IP Address not set with pre-boot settings.* * * *Param DEVICE not set, guesing interface* * * *DHCP configuration failed* * * *Killing off running processes.* And once at the recovery prompt, ifconfig won't show/manipulate any devices except lo. -- Tristam MacDonald System Administrator, Suffolk University Math CS Department -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d___ sisuite-users mailing list sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users
Re: [sisuite-users] SALI + VMWare ESXi
On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 3:54 AM, Bas van der Vlies b...@sara.nl wrote: On 02/14/2012 08:57 PM, Tristam MacDonald wrote: Has anyone tried using SALI to boot a VM instance running under WMWare's ESXi? Which virtual network device did you choose? I just googled something and you can select the e1000 driver. The VMware VMXNET3 Ethernet driver is not currently enabled in our setup. I will enable it i build a new version of SALI Ah, thank you. I must have glossed over network adapter selection when creating the VM - the e1000 driver does indeed do the trick. -- Tristam MacDonald -- Virtualization Cloud Management Using Capacity Planning Cloud computing makes use of virtualization - but cloud computing also focuses on allowing computing to be delivered as a service. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51521223/___ sisuite-users mailing list sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users
