Brian, thanks for finally clearing that up. I went ahead and came up with my own solution to this problem; however this is a single hangup that I cant seem to get past; if anyone has ANY suggestions I would be forever in their debt as I have spent so much time trying to make this thing work:
I am using SystemImager to auto-install about 500 different machines, some of them are CentOS; as you can Imagine I want to automate the installation of the bootloader; so I wrote a 2 scripts to accomplish this task. Why two? Because some of the machines are IDE, and some of them are SATA, and I need to be able to use the same disk image on both of the drive types. Here is the first bash script: if grep -q sda /proc/diskstats then TYPE="sda1" MOUNT1="/dev/sda1 /a/boot" MOUNT2="/dev/sda3 /a" else TYPE="hda1" MOUNT1="/dev/hda1 /a/boot" MOUNT2="/dev/hda3 /a" fi mount $MOUNT2 mount $MOUNT1 MOUNT3="proc /a/proc -t proc -o defaults" mount $MOUNT3 MKSYS="-p /a/sys" MOUNT4="sysfs /a/sys -t sysfs -o defaults" mkdir $MKSYS mount $MOUNT4 MOUNT5="/dev /a/dev -o bind" mount $MOUNT5 echo "mount $MOUNT2" echo "mount $MOUNT1" cp /sbin/grubinstall /a/sbin/grubinstall chmod 755 /a/sbin/grubinstall chmod +x /a/sbin/grubinstall chroot /a /sbin/grubinstall exit 0 What this does is determines whether the drive is SATA or IDE by looking at diskstats, if it is SATA, it mounts /dev/sda1 & /dev/sda3, if it is IDE, it mounts /dev/hda1 & /dev/hda3, it also creates and mounts all of the auxillary filesystems (proc, sys, dev) The next script which I run in the CentOS environment via chroot is: TYPE= SUBS= if grep -q sda /proc/diskstats then TYPE="sda1" SUBS="s/hda/sda/g" else TYPE="hda1" SUBS="s/sda/hda/g" fi grub-install --no-floppy --recheck /dev/$TYPE sed -i "$SUBS" /boot/grub/menu.lst echo "sed -i $SUBS /boot/grub/menu.lst" sed -i "$SUBS" /etc/fstab echo "sed -i $SUBS /etc/fstab" sed -i "$SUBS" /boot/grub/grub.conf echo "sed -i $SUBS /boot/grub/grub.conf" sed -i "$SUBS" /etc/grub.conf echo "sed -i $SUBS /etc/grub.conf" ls "ls -l /etc/grub.conf /boot/grub/grub.conf /boot/grub/menu.lst" exit 0 By the way /a is the ROOT of the hard drive (freshly imaged) and /a/boot is the boot partition of the hard drive (freshly imaged). This script again enumerates the type of hard disk attached to the system, installs grub on /dev/hda1 or /dev/sda1, modifies /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/grub.conf /etc/fstab /etc/grub.conf sda>hda hda>sda and so forth. Everything actually works fine; grub is installed; the files are all modified appropriately. The issue comes when the newly imaged system comes up. The first time the system boots up; grub is still configured to boot with root=/dev/sda3; even though NONE of the configuration files mention anything about /dev/sda3. However if I hit 'E' and modify the 'kernel ...' line in the grub editor from the bootloader, and allow it to boot up; the system boots up normally. The STRANGE part; is that after the first time it boots off of /dev/hda3; grub suddenly starts using that EVERY time the system boots; but I cant figure out why I have to first manually change it; and then reboot before it will work. Its almost like the CentOS boot process 'fixes' whatever is wrong with grub; the first time it boots after I run my crazy script on it; but I cant figure out what process during the boot is doing it; or what else I need to do to ensure trouble free auto-installation of CentOS. Any advice anyone can give me would be wonderful. Thanks, -Drew -----Original Message----- From: Brian Elliott Finley [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brian Elliott Finley Sent: Friday, March 03, 2006 9:34 PM To: Drew Weaver Cc: sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Sisuite-users] Can System Imager deal with LVM yet? I'm afraid what you are attempting is currently not a supported configuration. Disk type independence is my next priority after getting the current udev and uyok code, that is currently in the development trunk, released as stable. Cheers, -Brian Thus spake Drew Weaver ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): > Actually; all I'm doing is trying to get it to install grub on >an ext3 partition without disk labels. It works fine if I am imaging >from hda -> hda or sda->sda but if I go from hda->sda or sda->hda, it >fails to update /etc/fstab, /etc/grub.conf, /boot/grub/menu.lst.. etc >etc etc. > >-Drew > > > >-----Original Message----- >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andrea >Righi >Sent: Friday, March 03, 2006 12:42 PM >To: sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net >Subject: Re: [Sisuite-users] Can System Imager deal with LVM yet? > >Drew, > >could you provide more details about that? For example grub is not able >to load kernel & initrd if them are over an LVM volume... I don't know >if this is your scenario, but in this case you should consider to create >a /boot plain partition using for example ext[23], reiserfs, etc... > >Regards, >-Andrea > >Drew Weaver wrote: >> It doesn't even install grub properly; so I doubt it handles LVM. >> >> -Drew >> > > >------------------------------------------------------- >This SF.Net email is sponsored by xPML, a groundbreaking scripting >language >that extends applications into web and mobile media. Attend the live >webcast >and join the prime developer group breaking into this new coding >territory! >http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=110944&bid=241720&dat=12164 2 >_______________________________________________ >Sisuite-users mailing list >Sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net >https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users > > >------------------------------------------------------- >This SF.Net email is sponsored by xPML, a groundbreaking scripting language >that extends applications into web and mobile media. Attend the live webcast >and join the prime developer group breaking into this new coding territory! >http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid0944&bid$1720&dat1642 >_______________________________________________ >Sisuite-users mailing list >Sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net >https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users -- Brian Elliott Finley Mobile: 630.631.6621 ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by xPML, a groundbreaking scripting language that extends applications into web and mobile media. Attend the live webcast and join the prime developer group breaking into this new coding territory! http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid0944&bid$1720&dat1642 _______________________________________________ Sisuite-users mailing list Sisuite-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sisuite-users