Problem with installation on very big disks

[mirceac]

Hi,

First thank you for the good work, is nice to see such a nice effort to make using virtualisation a bit more manageable.
Now here is my problem:
The hw is a DELL PowerEdge 2900 dual quad Xeon at 2.66, 26GB RAM and a hw RAID5 made out 5 x 1Tb Seagate that gives something like 3.8TB of usable space.
Promox works OK on a 0.96TB RAID1 ( also hw, made of 2 disks ) but when I added all the 5 disks, made a RAID 5 out of them and tried to install again Promox on it I've only reached the stage where disks are prepared, I've got that progress bar to 100% in couple of minutes and then nothing happened for 4 hrs ( also no visible disk activity ) after which I've stopped the installation process, the interface responded and system booted OK.
Booting a Centos 5 dvd I've seen that Promox created a small normal partition and a 1.7TB LVM partition, 2.3TB were left unallocated, this seems a bit strange to me, maybe a PE size limitation on LVM.
It there a method to see what went wrong ( I've repeated the installation and it reached again the same point and stopped again), is there some "magic key" to see some logs or a console on this stage of installation ??
How can this be debugged, I'm willing to have one of the Promox staff have access to the DRAC remote access console if necessary or do myself whatever grunt work and tests are required.
I hope my quest is not hopeless because I really like the product.

Best regards,
Mircea

 

[dietmar]

At boot prompt type:

# debug

Then you will get sh access at various stages of the installation process (type CTRL-D to continue installation)

- Dietmar

 

[mirceac]

Hi Dietmar,

Thanks for your quick answer.
I did that, I've got again on Create Partitions step, in less then a minute this went to 100% and then it stays like that. Only Abort button is active.
Now what ?!?!?

Regards,
Mircea

 

[dietmar]

If you type Abort you will get another shell.

Press CTRL-ALT-F2 - is there any log info there?

- Dietmar

 

[mirceac]

Debug info

Hi Dietmar,

I did a screenshot of the administration console ( attached ), you'll see immediately what the problem is, now how do we fix that, or is even fixable ???

Best regards,
Mircea

 

[dietmar]

I did a screenshot of the administration console ( attached ), you'll see immediately what the problem is, now how do we fix that, or is even fixable ???

Fixing that would require to create a new CD, which I want to avoid. But we will fix it for 1.0. Is that OK for you?

- Dietmar

 

[mirceac]

Hi Dietmar,

Well this is a real bummer, if the new CD is showing up in a couple of days that will be perfect, but I have the feeling it will take a bit more, is that any plan B that I could try, once I install another distribution and this machine will go in production I doubt I'll get another chance to put it offline and change the distribution, and I'll really like to stay with Proxmox.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed, maybe there is a solution that can be done now ( even if it involves some hacking and duct tape to push forward trough this.
Anyway thank for your excellent support and I'm eagerly waiting for your answer.

Best regards,
Mircea

Fixing that would require to create a new CD, which I want to avoid. But we will fix it for 1.0. Is that OK for you?

- Dietmar

 

[dietmar]

Ok, the lets find the error first. Is it possible to get remot access somehow (send any info about that to dietmar@proxmox.com) - I can start debugging tomorrow (need some sleep now ;-)

- Dietmar

 

[dietmar]

you'll see immediately what the problem is, now how do we fix that, or is even fixable ???

Does lvdisplay shows any infos about the lvm volume sizes?

The output of pvdisplay would also be interesting.

- Dietmar

 

[mirceac]

pvdisplay & lvdisplay

Hi Dietmar,

Here is the requested date ( attached), it world be wonderful if you can connect remote tomorrow to have a debugging session, please PM me if possible with the hour when you want to do this and I'll setup everything, you need a machine with IE for this and you'll have full access tot the system console. I'll PM you back with all the required data( IP, user/pass, tel or IM)

Best regards,
Mircea

 

[mirceac]

Hi Dietmar,

I hope you had a nice and refreshing sleep, all the details and good news also are in your mail, I'm waiting for your "morning reboot" procedure to finish and maybe we can give it a try.

Cheers,
Mircea

Ok, the lets find the error first. Is it possible to get remot access somehow (send any info about that to dietmar@proxmox.com) - I can start debugging tomorrow (need some sleep now ;-)

- Dietmar