XCP-ng
    • Categories
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Groups
    • Register
    • Login

    An updated installer for XCP-ng 7.5.0

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Development
    32 Posts 7 Posters 12.5k Views 2 Watching
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • stormiS Offline
      stormi Vates 🪐 XCP-ng Team @Rinux
      last edited by

      @rinux Have these disks been used for RAID in the past? There may be some cases where the steps we took to clean the disks are incomplete.

      What's the MD5SUM of the ISO you used (would be a good habit to automatically give that kind of information :))?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • RinuxR Offline
        Rinux
        last edited by

        @stormi no, the disk pair contains an old installation of XenServer (no raid) and I do not think it has ever been used for anything else... md5sum of the ISO: deb2a0990390a6a4eb51a428b6a53995 (the same as the one shown here!).

        I'm not quite inside the xen logic, but on dom0 I do not find any trace of the availability of raid software profiles ... I figured I could find something with "dmesg | grep md" ... sure I'm not forgetting some boot options?

        stormiS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • stormiS Offline
          stormi Vates 🪐 XCP-ng Team @Rinux
          last edited by

          @rinux The version we released officially has had fixes. Please try it: https://xcp-ng.org/download/

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • D Offline
            dvdhngs @frank-s
            last edited by

            @frank-s newbie here, just 1 week of trying to use, have that exactly same problem, already make raid, did some things, when trying to install again, md127p1 is already in use, I know need the zero raid... But I don't know how.... Using another live Linux?

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • F Offline
              frank-s
              last edited by

              For me it was old mdadm superblocks. Once the partition tables have been deleted they could be anywhere depending on the original raid setup. Best thing is zero the entire disk.

              dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx bs=1M status=progress
              where x is your drive letter.

              Do this for each raid disk
              Then go and drink some beers. It will take some time...

              D 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • D Offline
                dvdhngs @frank-s
                last edited by

                @frank-s, very thanks for the help!
                where I run this line? on shell option at xcp-ng instalation screen, or f3 when installing, or using another live linux?

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • olivierlambertO Offline
                  olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Co-Founder CEO
                  last edited by

                  To avoid filling the whole disk with zeros, you can probably "just" do a mdadm --zero-superblock /dev/sdX (for each disk).

                  If it's not enough, please report back 🙂

                  @dvdhngs when you are in any menu in the install, use Alt key + right arrow to get a console.

                  F D 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • F Offline
                    frank-s @olivierlambert
                    last edited by

                    @olivierlambert
                    I did that Olivier but for me it didn't work. That's why I zeroed both disks entirely. Worth a try though as it doesn't take long.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • olivierlambertO Offline
                      olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Co-Founder CEO
                      last edited by olivierlambert

                      Do you remember, on this disk, which version of mdadm superblocks did you used before?

                      F 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • F Offline
                        frank-s @olivierlambert
                        last edited by

                        @olivierlambert
                        Hmmm. It might have been 0.9 as it was for boot partition. It wasn't whole disk raid though. Each partition was a different raid set.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • olivierlambertO Offline
                          olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Co-Founder CEO
                          last edited by

                          I see now! Because we zero the superblock on the whole disk, it doesn't zero all the superblocks on all existing partitions.

                          I wonder if doing a loop that runs the zero superblock command on each partition would solved this 🙂

                          F 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • F Offline
                            frank-s @olivierlambert
                            last edited by

                            @olivierlambert
                            Probably that would work or as an alternative use dd to zero the first 45GiB of each disk shouldn't take too long. I was not pressed for time and had other things to do so I just zeroed the disks entirely after which setup was flawless.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • olivierlambertO Offline
                              olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Co-Founder CEO
                              last edited by

                              Yes but your feedback was precious to understand why our zero superblock on the whole drive wasn't enough 🙂 Now we could maybe improve the installer to avoid this problem in the future!

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • olivierlambertO Offline
                                olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Co-Founder CEO
                                last edited by

                                Issue created: https://github.com/xcp-ng/xcp/issues/107

                                olivierlambert created this issue in xcp-ng/xcp

                                open Software RAID install on previous used mdadm disks #107

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • F Offline
                                  frank-s
                                  last edited by

                                  @olivierlambert
                                  Glad to be of help. The new raid installer is a really good thing and I am using it now on two servers. The downside, however, is that it uses whole disk raid. If it used partition based raid1 then if XCP-NG were installed without local storage repo, it would be possible (after installation) to manually create raid 10 for the storage. With mdadm this could be done with three or more disks. So at that point all the installation partitions would be raid1 with all disk partitions as members but the bulk of each disk (assuming large disks) would be left unused for raid 10 - faster local storage. Would that be an over complicated change to the installer or is this a possibility?

                                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • olivierlambertO Offline
                                    olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Co-Founder CEO
                                    last edited by

                                    I completely understand your idea, but I don't see a simple solution (I mean, even just thinking in terms of possible menu in the current UI). If you can go deeper on the functional perspective (drawing with basic wireframe the process), it could help to specify it and maybe make it real then (one big rule in dev: more specs = easier to dev)

                                    F 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • F Offline
                                      frank-s @olivierlambert
                                      last edited by

                                      @olivierlambert
                                      I wasn't suggesting that the installer should do raid 10 necessarily. For XCP-NG itself raid 1 is sufficient. Just suggesting that the partitions of the installation could each be a different raid 1 set rather that simply doing raid 1 on a whole disk basis. If the end user chose to have the installer create local storage it could be just raid1 on another (big) partition. For those who want improved performance however there is the possibility to manually create raid 10 local storage post install.
                                      What is wireframe? (I am not a developer).

                                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • olivierlambertO Offline
                                        olivierlambert Vates 🪐 Co-Founder CEO
                                        last edited by

                                        I was suggesting you just draw the workflow as you imagine it during the install. Example of a wireframe:

                                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • D Offline
                                          dvdhngs @olivierlambert
                                          last edited by

                                          @olivierlambert couldn't open /Dev/sda for write - not zeroing

                                          Tried:
                                          mdadm --stop /dev/md127

                                          Result:
                                          Cannot get exclusive access to /dev/md127
                                          Perhaps a running process, mounted filesystem or active volume group?

                                          I will try with DD now

                                          F 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • F Offline
                                            frank-s @dvdhngs
                                            last edited by

                                            @dvdhngs
                                            Run lvscan to see if there are any active logical volumes. If there are run vgchange <group name> -an to deactivate all logical volumes. Now try to stop the array.

                                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                            • First post
                                              Last post