On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 10:32:01AM +0100, Steinar H. Gunderson wrote: > On Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 11:07:37AM -0800, Ross Boylan wrote: > > I would like to be able to use the Debian installer to create a system > > in which all the partitions, including root, were managed by EVMS. > > This is a duplicate of #223995 / #239892, I'd guess. It may be that fixing those would fill this wish, but that wasn't clear to me. I think there is at least one additional element, which is that the changes need to be integrated into the debian installer.
223995 udeb is incomplete and mostly non-functional seemed to apply to earlier versions. Discussion on debian-boot suggests there is no evms stuff in the etch installer right now. 239892 looked as if it might be specific to the business card install, and it might describe fiddling with evms post-install rather than integrating it into the installation. > > > I don't have a good sense of what's involved in making this happen, > > and it may be the installer team doesn't want the added complexity. > > The things that would be needed is: > > - Make sure the evms udeb works properly again (IIRC it's broken somehow, > perhaps with regard to libraries or something). > - Make a partman module for evms. This is definitely the most demanding task, > and needs someone who's familiar with both evms and partman (which is a > shell script of several thousand lines). Yikes! An additional issue that occurred to me is the use of evmsgui. The installer is non-graphical, so I don't know if providing evmsgui would be appropriate. It sounds from this description as if partman is the "front-end" for installation. That said, I've noticed two strands recently on debian-boot. First, there is a graphical installer being developed. Second, there has been some discussion about including C++; I think this was motivated by an interest in including a graphical partition tool (a parted flavor using qt was discussed). This might be a good place to jump in and suggest evmsgui as an alternative, particularly if it doesn't require C++. There were reservations about including C++ in the installer. EVMS's ability to handle a wide range of disks and filesystems is probably a plus for the installer. Obviously, people would want to know that using evms to partition doesn't force you to use EVMS later (I think it doesn't as long as you use native partitions). One other wrinkle might be the requirement that /boot be on a fairly vanilla partition. There needs to be a way to catch if that is not happening and tell the person doing the install to fix it up. > - Test, integrate, debug :-) > > > There appear to be quite a few bugs against EVMS (mostly concerning > > making initrd's) that probably need to be fixed before it can work > > with the installer. > > ATM my current priority is getting _something_ into testing, so I can upload > a fix to stable for #339891. I completely support that, hence this is wishlist. On the other hand, perhaps your remark means that you could have the integration with the installer done so quickly that it would interfere with the 10 day hold on the upload for 339891 :) > > > A more modest solution would be to provide instructions about how to > > use EVMS with the installer. At the moment it appears to require a > > two or three step process: > > 1) install regular Debian system > > 2) make EVMS system and partitions > > 3) delete original system and reclaim its space. > > Well, yes and no. See the package "evms-bootdebug" -- with it, you > can get Thanks. I wasn't aware of the package. > into a rescue console, where you can convert your filesystems quite > painlessly to EVMS drives -- no deletion needed. If you want to convert from > ordinary volumes to EVMS+LVM2 (or something along those lines), you'd have to > make new, move data and then delete, yes. I thought EVMS was still at LVM1. > > /* Steinar */ Thanks for the info, and for your work packaging EVMS. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
