[rcferri at us.ibm.com: Problem with va-systemimager]

[Brian Elliott Finley]

Jon,

I just had this forwarded to me from the beowulf list.  If I remember
right, you posted this issue to the SystemImager list about a week ago.
Can I presume that your issues didn't go away when you tried
prepareclient with the -e option?

This is an issue that I've not encountered before and I'd like to find
out why it's happening.  I'll certainly be getting a copy of Partition 
Magic for myself to test this out, but I'd also like to find out more
about your setup.

o If you *don't* fix the error, does the system operate properly?
o If you "fix the error" with Partition Magic, does the system still
  operate properly?
o Do you have the "error" on your golden client?
o If you install directly from your Linux distribution media, do you
  have the same error?
  o Which distribution and version are you using?
o Does Linux give you any errors in any of it's logs?
o Are your disks ide, scsi?
  o If scsi, what kind of controller?
o Are the disks on each of your systems identical?
o Was there a non-linux operating system on these machines prior to
  autoinstalling them via SystemImager?
o Does the disk geometry reported by Linux match the disk geometry
  reported by Partition Magic?
  Example:

    [bfinley at dragonfly:~]
    $ cat /proc/ide/hda/geometry 
    physical     16383/15/63
    logical      1559/240/63

  or with sfdisk:

    [bfinley at dragonfly:~]
    $ sudo sfdisk -g /dev/hda
    /dev/hda: 1559 cylinders, 240 heads, 63 sectors/track


And a couple of quick notes about SystemImager and disk partitioning:
o sfdisk is the utility used
o if you run "prepareclient" without the -explicit-geometry option, then
  your client's disks will be sized based on megabytes instead of 
  sectors (MB is the default).  The last partition will be dynamically 
  sized to the end of the disk.

Cheers, -Brian



----- Forwarded message from Richard C Ferri <rcferri at us.ibm.com> -----

Envelope-to: brian at valinux.com
Delivery-date: Mon, 21 May 2001 18:49:18 -0700
Subject: Problem with va-systemimager
To: brian at valinux.com
From: "Richard C Ferri" <rcferri at us.ibm.com>

Brian, wasn't sure if you follow the beowulf forum, this question popped
up... Rich
---------------------- Forwarded by Richard C Ferri/Poughkeepsie/IBM on
05/21/2001 09:37 PM ---------------------------

Jon Tegner <Jon.Tegner at wiglaf.se>@beowulf.org on 05/14/2001 02:45:22 PM

Sent by:  beowulf-admin at beowulf.org


To:   beowulf at beowulf.org
cc:
Subject:  Problem with va-systemimager



Are about to set up a cluster and figured systemimager would be a good
way (have used kickstart previously - is there a consensus of which
method is "best"?). However, when testing on a fresh system Partition
Magic detects some kind of error:

"Partition Magic has detected an error 116 on the partition starting at
sector 17157420 at disk 1. The starting LBA value is 17157420 and the
CHS value is 16450559. The LBA and the CHS values must be equal,
Partition Magic has verified that the LBA value is correct."

Partition Magic can even fix this error, but I don't want to to load in
Partition Magic on all nodes (would take too long time), so I was
wondering if there is another easy way to fix this problem, or
preventing it from occurring in the first place (nothing seems to be
wrong when I make the image).

Regards,

/jon





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----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------
 Brian Elliott Finley     VA Linux http://valinux.com/
 http://thefinleys.com/            phone: 972.447.9563
 http://systemimager.org/           phax: 801.912.6057
 CSA, C2000, CNE, CLSE, MCP, and Certifiable Linux Nut
-------------------------------------------------------