Clean install partitioning

[jayrock]

Hi

I noticed there is no comprehensive guide about how to do the partitions during a clean install. I'm going to set up a new system during the next couple of days and what I want is that all data space is managed by greyhole pooling, and that the "landing zone" is not same partition as the system. I plan to do it like this:

1. Have a system with a single clean drive
2. During Fedora installation process, reserve 25 GB for on /dev/sda for root and swap, rest goes into a second partion /dev/sda1 dedicated to data, this one will be mounted mounted to var/hda/files
3. After installation, activate greyhole. Remove / from storage pool and add /dev/sda1. That should make /dev/sda1 hold both the "landing zone" and the first greyhole drive.
4. Add more hard drives according to http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Adding_ ... o_your_HDA

Sounds like piece of cake Did I miss somthing vital?

Cheers

jayrock

[gboudreau]

Sounds right.
Except that what you call sda1 will not appear in /var/hda/files/drives/, it will only be mounted as /var/hda/files, and that partition will be included in the pool.

[jayrock]

Thanks, will change the first post to make it clearer.

Cheers

jayrock

[benolding]

It sounds so easy, yet it seems like I just messed something up. I went through a clean install, saw the warning about not letting the / partition into the greyhole, and decided it was easiest to just go through the process again (I can use the experience anyway). I partitioned 20 GB out of my 80 GB hard drive for root, the default for swap, and left the rest alone (I have another drive to add on as well as a next step).

I had thought I could just add a new partition later used gparted, which I'd add to greyhole.

However, I find myself unable to do anything with gparted - it claims it cannot read the partition table. I tried hdparm -z /dev/sda to no avail.

Amahi seems to be up and running, and under the administration, I'm using about 3.5GB of my 20GB drive. Any ideas? Clearly I guess I messed up the install & should have partitioned my drive initially in a different way?

Thanks for the assistance... I'm a former Windows user, I'm afraid...

[jayrock]

I actually managed to do it today, but the process was slightly different. Will update the first post asap.

[nephster]

I wrestled with this all Xmas day yes, I'm a Windows user too!

Here's what I did - might help someone.

Say you have four drives, and you want to install Fedora into a smallish partition on Drive 1, have the rest of Drive 1 for storage using Greyhole, and the other three drives all for storage.

Allow default install of "replace existing Linux installation", but say you want to work with the partitions. Only allow Drive 1 to be part of the installation - untick the other drives (otherwise I think all the drives we become one huge LVM drive, and we want separate partitions to be able to use Greyhole properly for redundancy).

By default that will create a separate "boot" partition of say 200MB, a / (root) partition and a swap partition (these will will take up all of Drive 1). But if like me you have a large drive 1, you don't want that - especially after having been warned to not use / with Greyhole - so edit / to knock it down in size, say to 10000MB. Now create a "landing strip" where you will have Amahi put files temporarily before Greyhole moves them to your storage partitions - create a *new* partition, perhaps /home (you can pick it from the dropdown) and make it large enough that it can take all the files you want to move there temporarily. I might put say 150GB there in one go before it empties again, so I went with 200000MB to be safe, but obviously your mileage will vary. Now, do another new partition, BUT *type in* the name "/storage" and let it use all the rest of the free space on Drive 1. This will take some of our data after it's been moved by Greyhole, along with the other three storage drives.

After the Fedora and then Amahi install, you will need to install gparted, format the other 3 drives (perhaps to ext3 or 4) and follow the Amahi wiki instructions to mount them. Then, in the dashboard, change the location of your shares from var/hda/files/whatever to use home/hda/files/whatever as the location. Next, enable Greyhole, add /storage, Drive2, D3 and D4 to the pool, then set your shares to use the pool.

Hope that makes sense

[jayrock]

Hi nephster,

thanks for posting! I did it in a very similar way, with one difference: I split my drive into 25GB for /, and then assgined the rest to /var/hda/files. By doing so, it's the landing zone for new files and at the same time part of the pool. Because of the pooling it's very unlikely that it will fill up, so I always have plenty of space in my landing zone.

Let's see how it works out...

/jayrock

[benolding]

So.... is the take-away that if I do not partition the first drive fully during the install process I cannot use the unpartitioned space later?

It sounds like what you guys both did was create an extra partition during the install, utilizing the full first drive with 3 partitions in total ("/", "swap", "landing area). I created just two - "/" and "swap," leaving a majority of the drive unpartitioned for later use (or so I thought).

Am I hosed here?

[nephster]

So.... is the take-away that if I do not partition the first drive fully during the install process I cannot use the unpartitioned space later?

It sounds like what you guys both did was create an extra partition during the install, utilizing the full first drive with 3 partitions in total ("/", "swap", "landing area). I created just two - "/" and "swap," leaving a majority of the drive unpartitioned for later use (or so I thought).

Am I hosed here?

Exactly what I did to start with. If my experience is anything to go by - it can't be repartitioned (easily) to use that free space as it sees it as being part of the LVM even though it's not using it. Installed F12 four times yesterday till I got this sorted about 3am and don't get me started on my F14/Amahi experience!!!

Well, at least now I know how to make wake-on-lan stick after a reboot, can use putty and TightVNC, can install via yum and rpm, have got Flash installed, etc etc.

[benolding]

Ah - thanks for your reply.

You're right: that first drive created on install of fedora does in fact go to lvm2. Thankfully, I have a little experience with lvm, so it wasn't too hard to create a logical volume from the terminal using the "lvcreate" command.

I manually added an entry into /etc/fstab for the logical volume I created, and I now have an additional partition, separate from my "/" partition to add to greyhole.

Appreciate all the quick responses on this thread! Happy holidays, best of luck.