[Bdi4emc-help] Re: Install Help please

[Kent A. Reed]

Arthur wrote:

>Message: 1
>Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 23:36:45 +0000
>From: Arthur Butler <arthurbutler at otters.ndo.co.uk>
>Subject: [Bdi4emc-help] Install Help please
>To: bdi4emc-help at lists.ourproject.org
>Message-ID: <43AC8A0D.1050608 at otters.ndo.co.uk>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
>
>Hi.
>
>Thank you for working on these programs. Unfortunately I'm having 
>trouble installing the BDI 4.30 version. I'm not a complete newby, have 
>used Redhat, and now Debian on other PC's. I've checked the md5sum of 
>the iso downloaded, and of the CD itself. I've turned "detect virus by 
>trend" off in the bios, and am using LBA mode for the 40G hard drive, 
>and reburnt the CDRW to a CDR just incase, all as suggested in the FAQ. 
>The install starts fine, all packages are then installed, but when the 
>screen saying "post install config" or something pops up it crashes. The 
>PC I'm trying to install on is a 500MHz AMD K6II processor, with 128MB 
>RAM. I think there was a problem with BDI on K6 processors, but think 
>newer versions of BDI are OK. I'm trying to use LVM too, with my own 
>partitioning scheme, based on that I've used on my desktop PC. I'm 
><<<stuff deleted>>>
>I'm wondering about trying either a minimal install with lvm, or running 
>the upgrade script on the partially working version.
>
>  
>
I doubt that the AMD K6 is the problem, although there is always plenty 
of room for error with the variety of motherboards and BIOSes out there. 
Over the last 4 years, I have installed various versions of Red Hat and 
Fedora Core Linux on a no-name 600 MHz AMD K6 machine with absolutely no 
difficulty. When I get a chance later this week, I'll try installing 
BDI-4.30 to it just to be sure. Note that 128MB of RAM isn't very much 
memory. If you're unlucky the system will start paging to disk with an 
attendant hit in performance.

I have no experience whatever with LVM (although I've used the 
equivalent functionality on Silicon Graphics' commercial version of Unix 
known as IRIX) but when I search Google on combinations like "lvm 
install debian" and "lvm problem debian" I get plenty of hits. Since the 
BDI is based on the Debian kernel and packaging, I'd try to reduce the 
problem to its simplest form by first doing a trial install of the 
latest stable version of the Debian distribution to make sure I could 
get it running over LVM2 and only then try installing the BDI with LVM2. 
I suppose it is possible that the real-time extensions added to support 
EMC could interfere with LVM, but Paul's already pointed out a more 
likely possibility.

It's just my 2-cents worth, but I think EMC should run on its own 
dedicated host, in which case I'm not sure LVM buys you much anyway.

Regards,
Kent