Re: [TCLUG:4460] RedHat 5.2 + Errata + Gnome 1.0 + KDE + More Stuff

["Mark A. Bentley" <bentlema@cs.umn.edu>]

On Fri, 5 Mar 1999, Tim Wilson wrote:

> On Fri, 5 Mar 1999, Mark A. Bentley wrote:
> 
> > The way partitions are specified in the kickstart config file could use a
> > lot of work too...its not very flexible.  
> 
> Luckily my HDs are all identical, but does kickstart work if the
> partitions are different sizes? I didn't see anything about that in the
> docs.
> 

Yes, it's certainly flexible enough to do that.  Here's an example...
 
	clearpart --all
	part / --size 128
	part swap --size 128
	part /tmp --size 128	
	part /usr --size 1024
	part /export/scratch01 --size 1 --grow

Doing a fresh install, this would clear the partition table, and create the
5 partitions listed.  The --grow feature comes in handy when you have
different size disks, the scratch partition would fill up whatever space is
left on the disk.

Oh, that reminds me, another bug is with the swap specification.  If you
specify 128 (as above) and you actually get more than 128 (because of the
disk geometry) the kickstart will fail.   So what I've ended up doing is
reducing the size down to something smaller, like 120. 

What I don't like is the "clearpart".  You can specify "--all" or
"--linux".  But what if I want to keep my /export/scratch01?  What if I
want to keep my entire partition table, and only mke2fs on /, /tmp, and
/usr?  This is where the limitation comes in...kickstart currently doesn't
have a way to do this...

I could trick kickstart by changing the scratch partition to a different
type, say FAT32, then use "clearpart --linux".  The kickstart would then
ignore that during the install, and I would have to change it back to
"Linux native" and add it back into /etc/fstab and /etc/exports.  But this
is such a hack, I can't bring myself to do it.

I guess it's not such a big deal with a scratch partition, but just imagine
if it was, say, /export/very-important-research.  I wouldn't want to be the
one to lose that partition...

==========================================================================
Mark A Bentley                  Email:  bentlema@cs.umn.edu
Systems Staff, CSci Dept
University of Minnesota         URL:    http://www.cs.umn.edu/~bentlema/