problems with unpartitioned harddrives and automatic partitioning

[Joel Andres Granados]

Shabazian, Chip wrote:
> Not sure, but I do --all before --initlabel.  Shouldn't make a
> difference, but I've seen stranger things.
> 
> The other thing you could probably do is wipe the the partition table in
> %pre:
> 
> set $(list-harddrives)
> cat << EOF >> /tmp/fdisk.input
> w
> 
> EOF
> 
> for i in $d1,$d2,$d3,...(better ways to do this, but this is worth
> starting with); do fdisk $i < /tmp/fdisk.input; done
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: kickstart-list-bounces at redhat.com
> [mailto:kickstart-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Eugeny Zadevalov
> Sent: Wednesday, February 13, 2008 2:10 PM
> To: kickstart-list at redhat.com
> Subject: problems with unpartitioned harddrives and automatic
> partitioning
> 
> Hello All,
> 
> I've been trying to setup automatic partitioning with Kickstart.
> Everything is okay until I try to run my Kickstart setup on machine with
> unpartitioned drives (like if partition table is broken or filled with
> zeros).
> 
> I'm experiencing same issue with both Centos4.6 and Centos5.1.
> 
> My goal is to get raid1 setup automatically through kickstart. Below is
> cut from ks.cfg:
> ===
> zerombr
> clearpart --initlabel --all
> part raid.01 --size=2048 --onbiosdisk=80 --asprimary part raid.02
> --size=8192 --onbiosdisk=80 --asprimary --grow part raid.03 --size=2048
> --onbiosdisk=81 --asprimary part raid.04 --size=8192 --onbiosdisk=81
> --asprimary --grow
> raid /    --level=RAID1 --device=md0 --fstype=ext3 raid.02 raid.04
> raid swap --level=RAID1 --device=md1 --fstype=swap raid.01 raid.03 ===
> 
> If I remove this part and run kickstarting machine over Kickstart with
> manual partitioning I get warning about drives needs to be initialized. 
> That's normal I guess. But with my automatic partitioning I've
> "clearpart --initlabel --all" and that supposed to be initializing
> any/all unpartitioned drives but that's not happening. Kickstart just
> hangs giving bunch of errors.
> 
> If I just go ahead and do something like:
> fdisk /dev/hda
> w
> ENTER
> fdisk /dev/hdc
> w
> ENTER
> And then try again that automatic partitioning scheme it works like
> expected.
> 
> I've searched over the mailling list archive but wasn't able to find
> anything.
> 
> For me it looks like a bug with "--initlabel" option.
> 
> Any suggestions?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
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Cant tell you how many times I hit this problem :)  I solved it with a %pre section that initializes the drives.  As my needs where very simple, the script is very simple.  But you can add to it as your situation requires.

<snip>
%pre
parted -s /dev/sdX mklabel msdos
%end
</snip>

-- 
Joel Andres Granados
Red Hat / Brno, Czech Republic