2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

tpowa · 2010-08-23 10:21:37

You use btrfs on lvm, i didn't tested this scenario, but you shouldn't need any lvm on btrfs since btrfs has it's own implemantion, called subvolume.

ArchIMEDE · 2010-08-23 11:42:23

I don't know if issue occurs because I used btrfs or if I implemented /usr and /var on separated partitions from /

I know that "subvolume" concept exists, I must read further documentation. By the way, such a scenario (btrfs on lvm) was chosen for the fun

This afternoon I'll test to install arch on the same partitions but with ext4 and see if permission issue is still here...

tpowa · 2010-08-23 12:09:56

I don't think so because btrfs sets permissions on it's volumes. I'll check setup code for this too, but i'm sure it only appeared because of using btrfs.

ArchIMEDE · 2010-08-23 12:23:53

It's strange:

using btrfs on LVM with these following partitions working fine:
swap
/dev/mapper/vg-boot /boot ext2
/dev/mapper/vg-root / btrfs

it seems that issue occurs only when separated /usr and/or /var are combined with btrfs.... it's confusing me a lot!

tpowa · 2010-08-23 12:33:23

ok i'll check the code and try it myself in kvm later, thanks for trying such things, i cannot test all cases myself

ArchIMEDE · 2010-08-23 12:42:06

I like test "silly" scenarii: it's a part of my job (Quality and User Accpetance Tests in IT department)

tpowa · 2010-08-23 13:34:55

http://dev.archlinux.org/~tpowa/setup-latest.sh
should fix the 555 permission issue.
Btrfs creates base subdirectories with 555 permission by default.

Last edited by tpowa (2010-08-23 13:35:14)

OrangeRoot1000 · 2010-08-24 09:24:57

Hey tpowa...

Are you using gdisk or G/Parted on your ISO? Or are you still using the c/fdisk?

ArchIMEDE · 2010-08-24 10:16:39

tpowa wrote:

http://dev.archlinux.org/~tpowa/setup-latest.sh
should fix the 555 permission issue.
Btrfs creates base subdirectories with 555 permission by default.

It's ok now! thanks

Let's test other stuffs...

tpowa · 2010-08-24 12:49:22

OrangeRoot1000 wrote:

Hey tpowa...
Are you using gdisk or G/Parted on your ISO? Or are you still using the c/fdisk?

Now fdisk is used for none GPT partitioning, parted/gdisk is used for GPT.
cfdisk has been removed form the setup routine, but it is still there in the environment for manual calling.

OrangeRoot1000 · 2010-08-24 20:04:20

Okay then basically as a "complete" installer, because Grub1 appears to have issues with a truly formatted GPT mapping you have the only viable installer that won't ruin the geometries and block device mappings in SSD's The regular installer only uses c/fdisk and it destroys the above whereas gdisk/gnu parted can handle GPT and regular devices. Somewhere then until Arch fixes this issue then honestly SSD/GPT users need to be directed to your iso/hybrid.

You have fixed or have added what is fixed for GPT:

syslinux family which also places the mandatory 1MB empty partition in the front of the SSD because GPT mappings are larger than MBR/BIOS ones. ie the FIRST PRIMARY partition -- it has to have no fs placed on it and can be marked grub_bios or ee. The ee would be a flag like /boot would have the boot flag.

Making a mandatory/highly recommended separate /boot that grub.org says that GRUB2, which I have found regardless of alleged patch in Grub1, works the best... it also enables all the new filesystems out there EXT4, BRTFS and the N*LFS one. GRUB2 actually uses that 1MB partition properly.

Users installing with SSD/GPT devices because of the complexity of GRUB2 need to know they very likely will need a Super Grub2 Disk if their system fails to boot after exiting the chroot in the install. This is a snippet from my grub.cfg. I have yet to just change it to UUIDS though my fstab uses them.

# Timeout for menu
set timeout=5
# Set default boot entry as Entry 0
set default=0
# (0) Arch Linux
menuentry "Arch Linux x86_64" {
set root=(hd0,5)
linux (hd0,6)/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda5 ro
initrd (hd0,6)/kernel26.img
}

The hybrid you offer bypasses the official Archlinux step that as long as users select a source, get networking and TOTALLY skip partitioning on the main installer but they must go through the set mount points, block devices, filesystems, then proceed as normal they are fine.

If you still use GRUB1 its easy in the chroot to switch to GRUB2 because Pacman is working in the chroot. As long as they don't reboot, otherwise they have to go the hard way. In the above snippet I had to do this to get my box to boot, then I could change the code to what the snippet shows above. This is just the grub command line.

>insmod part_gpt
>set root=(hd0,5)
>linux (hd0,6) .... keep going with the rest of line
>kernel .... keep going with rest of snippet
>boot

Then ELF fired up and kernel loaded and I was off to the races. I had to change my root and linux/kernel mappings because even Grub2 didn't quite get it right. I pity the poor people that have more complicated settings than me. It's wild enough now that the extended/logical barrier is now gone. The SSD/GPT drives only use Primary partitions. So in my case on just a 32 GB SSD I have 7 primary partitions.

A few months ago when I approached you about GPT errors on my machine. You suggested it might be a kernel issue, which maybe could have been but based on what I've had to scour the web for.... the Syslinux family..ISO, EXT, SYS didn't properly support GPT then or not quite fully.... my biggest boon doggle was that C/Fdisk WILL and do destroy the geometries/block device mappings. The regular installer from that install I talked about last and I was always still having issues even after the install. I found out when I ran gdisk to actually use my GPT device the way it was designed instead of forcing it to stay in MBR provisionings that c/fdisk when it made the /boot partition overwrote the MBR by 2 bytes.

vp

Last edited by OrangeRoot1000 (2010-08-24 20:14:57)

tpowa · 2010-08-24 20:16:09

Thanks for the long statement, while reading it, does everything now work for you?
Are there any things that do not work correctly?

OrangeRoot1000 · 2010-08-24 20:27:45

No everything is working. I didn't know about your hybrid so I had to take the long route. With Arch being a rolling release the SYSlinux family has already been encorporated. Where the major bottleneck and problem lies at present is c/fdisk. They have to go or be recoded to handle GPT/UEI. gdisk and gnu parted have done that recoding so they are ahead of the curve.

My concern is that I have a very simple set up:

df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 10M 244K 9.8M 3% /dev
/dev/sda5 19G 4.8G 14G 26% /
shm 4.0G 284K 4.0G 1% /dev/shm
/dev/sdb1 466G 66G 401G 15% /home
/dev/sda2 4.0G 99M 3.7G 3% /tmp
/dev/sda4 4.0G 1.4G 2.4G 38% /var
/dev/sda6 244M 15M 216M 7% /boot
/dev/sdb2 233G 48G 186G 21% /data

But I'm not running RAID, LVM2, Loopback encryption or LUKS or anything else really complex. The overwrite of 2 bytes on the MBR doesn't sound like much. But if you're running the previously mentioned that complexity is going to make that 2 byte majorly matter.

Other than that once I found I need that 1MB partition because of how big the mappings are now compared to MBR and made a separate /boot I am good to go.....With what I have read here you are as far as making an installer you are ahead of the game. I actually have to say I made my buffer partition about 4-5 MB and when everything was all done I think it finally hit close to 10MB. That might seem like waste. But to me I couldn't afford to have a partition overwrite another partitioned area again and cause instabilities.

vp

Last edited by OrangeRoot1000 (2010-08-24 20:37:08)

ArchIMEDE · 2010-08-25 08:32:11

Hi TPOWA!

I wonder if I found a little bug:

Script (hwdetect) detected usb mass storage and pcmcia port connected to my laptop.
So both dialogs sequentially asked if I want include "usb" then "pcmcia" in hooks list stored in mkinitcpio.conf
If I answer "yes" to both questions, hooks list contains both hooks => it's right
If I answer "no" to both questions, hooks list doesn't contain such both ones => it's also right
If I answer "yes" for usb but "no" for pcmcia, hooks list doesn't contain "usb" entry => it's wrong

I had no time enough for testing last case:
If I answer "no" for usb but "yes" for pcmcia

another remark/request:
If user installs archlinux on lvm, why "uselvm" entry isn't automatically set to "yes" in rc.conf?

tpowa · 2010-08-25 09:02:32

USELVM is not set, because archboot uses initcpio setup, this is only needed if a custom kernel is used which doesn't activate lvm in initramfs.

tpowa · 2010-08-25 10:10:12

fixed setup located here, hwdetect call needed to adjust for usb call:
http://dev.archlinux.org/~tpowa/setup-latest.sh

Try to find the next issue
Thanks for debugging.

greetings
tpowa

steve___ · 2010-08-25 14:14:39

Good job ArchIMEDE.

ArchIMEDE · 2010-08-26 09:23:01

tpowa wrote:

fixed setup located here, hwdetect call needed to adjust for usb call:
http://dev.archlinux.org/~tpowa/setup-latest.sh

I confirm this bug is fixed

Cows · 2010-08-27 05:16:40

I was reading the release notes and I it looks like this would fix this problem that I have with the latest official release relating to cylinders on my ssd.

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=101409

http://yfrog.com/moimg20100721022934j

FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 0: Partition ends in the final partial cylinder"

tpowa · 2010-08-27 06:07:37

cfdisk is not involved in setup routine anymore, it simply doesn't work well with new alignment and such things.

ArchIMEDE · 2010-08-27 08:42:53

Hi all!

I afraid I found a new bug

Keep in mind I dowloaded setup-latest.sh script from dev.archlinux.org/~tpowa last evening.

I launched the script and created LVM during setup session (all existing LVM related objects were refreshed before)
When I created lv with 1024 Mb (I input 1024 in dialog box), Dialog which displays all partitions before we start to mount them shows that lv size is 1073 Mb

Keeping same unit during entire installation session should be good.

I do not remember if this bug existed before.

Regards

tpowa · 2010-08-27 09:21:28

Yes i'll look at it, i try to make everything 4k sector ready, due to this i changed calculation method.
I'll check this.

tpowa · 2010-08-27 13:05:43

should be fixed again, reverted all changes on device mapper, it's not needed to calculate it by /sys

MajorTom · 2010-09-04 04:08:48

I was playing with archboot today, PXE booting into it and using it as a rescue system. I like it. I'd like to make a request though:

1. Include "Architecture = auto" in /etc/pacman.conf.

I know this is present in /tmp/pacman.conf but that won't work if you're not doing a full system install but just using archboot as a rescue environment and want to easily sync a few additional tools.

2. Create a separate main menu entry between current 2. and 3. to "Set up Network".

I realize that network configuration gets auto-invoked after selecting "3. Select Source" and then "2. FTP/HTTP" and "0. Setup Network" but I'd really like to see it in the main menu. Not labelled as "0." and spelled "Set up" instead of "Setup". Sorry for being so anal about this - I mean no disrespect. Keep up the good work.

miechoszuja · 2010-09-05 20:18:09

Hi. Today i was trying to install archlinux from archboot 2010.08 (x64). I can't install it because setup script freezes at prepare hard drive section. I was trying btrfs and reiserfs file systems for root, both mbr and gpt table. I can't use whole hdd because of windows 7 install. It seems that script freezes at filesystem create stage. I can create filesystems by hand, but can't set the mount points to continue install.
Everything seems ok with partitions and HDD, Ubuntu installs without problems.

here gdisk and dmesg ouput from Ubuntu:
http://codepad.org/Jqyzy0ah

Any ideas?

Arch Linux

#26 2010-08-23 10:21:37

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

#27 2010-08-23 11:42:23

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

#28 2010-08-23 12:09:56

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

#29 2010-08-23 12:23:53

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

#30 2010-08-23 12:33:23

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

#31 2010-08-23 12:42:06

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

#32 2010-08-23 13:34:55

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

#33 2010-08-24 09:24:57

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

#34 2010-08-24 10:16:39

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

#35 2010-08-24 12:49:22

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

#36 2010-08-24 20:04:20

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

#37 2010-08-24 20:16:09

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

#38 2010-08-24 20:27:45

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

#39 2010-08-25 08:32:11

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

#40 2010-08-25 09:02:32

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

#41 2010-08-25 10:10:12

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

#42 2010-08-25 14:14:39

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

#43 2010-08-26 09:23:01

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

#44 2010-08-27 05:16:40

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

#45 2010-08-27 06:07:37

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

#46 2010-08-27 08:42:53

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

#47 2010-08-27 09:21:28

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

#48 2010-08-27 13:05:43

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

#49 2010-09-04 04:08:48

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

#50 2010-09-05 20:18:09

Re: 2010.08-1 archboot "2k10-R6" ISO hybrid image released

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