RE: [Xen-devel] auto-installing debian on xen on debian withdebian-installer preseeding

["James Harper" <james.harper@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Does the debian installer really not support lvm? I'm sure I've
installed debian with root on software raid + lvm before... maybe the
sarge version has less features than the one I used, although this was
between 3 and 6 months ago.

I'd use debootstrap in preference to the debian installer, but that's
probably just my preference, the installer might make the final config a
bit easier.

James



> -----Original Message-----
> From: xen-devel-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:xen-devel-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Philip Hands
> Sent: Wednesday, 29 June 2005 22:07
> To: Debian Install System Team; xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [Xen-devel] auto-installing debian on xen on debian
withdebian-
> installer preseeding
> 
> Hi Folks,
> 
> Hopefully this will be of interest to some of you.
> 
> I've put together a debian-installer preseed setup, that allows (among
> other things) one to do a non-interactive install of Xen with a
minimal
> Debian as it's Domain0, sets up LVM so that one can create disks for
other
> domains and then lets you run the debian installer in a new domain so
that
> you can then install Debian instances.
> 
> For the Xen folks, this should turn into an easy way for people to dip
> their toe in the water without having to read lots of tedious
> documentation, and also be a pretty decent way of doing real
deployments
> (although I'd have thought that using debootstrap for the secondary
> installs might make a bit more sense, but at least you get a machine
where
> you can do that without any effort)
> 
> For the debian-installer folks, you might be interested (or horrified
;-)
> about how I managed this with only slight tweaking to the sarge
release
> version of debian-installer (given that it doesn't support LVM, so I
had
> to
> do a bit of scripting).  Also, there's some (at present rather
kludgey)
> tweaks that are needed to allow debian-installer to work within an
> unprivileged xen domain.
> 
> Given that you could have a load of diagnostic tools in Dom0, and then
> fire
> up one or more installs in subsequent domains, with the (theoretical)
> possibility of monitoring what they were doing from the outside, this
> could
> turn into a nice environment for testing debian-installer.  Although
at
> present it's significantly less helpful than a real machine because I
> don't
> see any way of getting to /dev/tty[234] under xen, so debugging is
> currently a right pain,
> 
> Anyway, here it is:
> 
>   http://hands.com/d-i/
> 
> There are some HOWTOs and top page includes a README.html.  It's still
a
> work in progress, so I may well reorganise the layout of the
> subdirectories
> at some point (it's mildly chaotic at present).  The idea behind the
> structure is that one can turn up to a site with standard(ish) boot
media,
> and have the preseed system determine the site it's running on (or you
can
> tell it by hand) and then install the requested machine type.
> 
> The xen setup described above will get installed if you specify a
machine
> type of "xen0", which you do by booting the mildly tweaked boot media,
and
> specify this at the boot prompt:
> 
>   boot:  auto26 local/cfg=xen0
> 
> the tweaks to the boot media are described in the
HOWTO-{PXE,CD,USB}.txt
> files, the details about the xen setup are described in the
HOWTO-xen.txt
> 
> If people want to customise this to their own needs, they can either
grab
> a
> copy and point the install media at their local server in the initial
> preseed,cfg, or they're welcome to have write access to the svk
repository
> where all this resides (once I work out a clean way of admin-ing
that).
> 
> Anyway, feel free to have a play, and I'm very open to suggestions on
how
> to improve things.
> 
> Things that are currently less than perfect:
> 
>   Xen:  it would be nice to know how to access the other virtual
consoles
>         of a XenU domain from Dom0, so one could get at the shell if
an
>         install goes wrong.
> 
>   debian-installer:
>       the current setup uses side effecting include-commands in a
>       positively abusive manner to set preseed variables under
scripted
>       control --- there must be a better way (or we should add one)
> 
>       I'd like to be able to say "include this preseed file if it
exists,
>       but don't give me an error if it doesn't" or alternatively
"include
>       this file if it exists, otherwise include that one"
> 
>       It would be nice to have a script run late enough in the
base-config
>       so that one could reboot (in this case for the first boot into
Xen)
> 
> Cheers, Phil.
> 
> P.S.  Please only reply to one list unless you're pretty sure that
you're
>       saying something of interest to both.


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