Re: [Testbed-admins] Booting error in Customizing the Generic Image

["'Ryan Jackson'" <rdjackso@flux.utah.edu>]

* Cheng Cui <ccui1@tigers.lsu.edu> [091113 15:08]:
> Then, I run the 'hdparm -z /dev/sda' on the host of PC1, but there is
> only sda and sda4 info in /proc/partitions. And of course, I can't mount
> sda1 by the mount_bsd_slice. Again, no matter how I re-copy the
> FBSD64-GENERIC.ndz, it still does not work. Maybe copy those two images
> separately damaged some partition table, I guess.

Strange, that should work.  It works fine when using the Linux Frisbee
MFS to write separate images to each partition, so I don't know what's
wrong.

Could you do this again before going any further with installation 
and send me the following output (start with the whole-disk image on
disk so that you have a valid partition table):
1. The output of '/sbin/fdisk -l -u /dev/sda' before you write either
   image (FreeBSD or Linux) to disk.
2. The content of /proc/partitions
3. The exact commands you used to write the images
4. The output of '/sbin/fdisk -l -u /dev/sda' after you write the
   images.

I'd really appreciate it so that I see if I need to fix anything on my
end.  We need to make sure this will be stable for you.

> Fortunately, I had previous imageziped full generic (BSD+linux.ndz)
> image, and I can mount them two under this linux admin MFS. 
> So now, can you give me a kick out on how to edit the grub under linux
> admin MFS to boot both FreeBSD and Linux partition on the disk? Or how
> can I figure it out under the command line?

You don't need to edit the Grub configuration to do this; in fact you
shouldn't need to touch anything else at this point.

The nodes contact boss at boot time (actually Grub does using a custom
UDP protocol) to determine which partition to boot from, and
everything needed to do that has already been installed and is
working.  If it weren't you wouldn't be able to boot the admin MFS.

Right now boss is telling Grub (the one that's loaded via TFTP at boot
time, not the one installed in the Fedora boot sector) to load the
admin MFS over the network, so that's what it's doing.  Run this on
boss to make boss stop booting the admin MFS on this node (replace
'my_node' with the name of your node):

withadminprivs node_admin off my_node

Once that's done, reboot the node.  Grub will not boot the admin MFS
anymore, and will instead do one of the following:

1. Wait in Grub until boss tells it to boot something
2. Boot the Frisbee linux MFS and write an image to disk
3. Boot into the OS specified for that node

Basically, once you've customized your images, proceed with
installation as normal.  Nothing at this point is different from
running a testbed using the FreeBSD MFS.

Does this make sense, or have I misunderstood what you want to do?

Let me know if you still have problems after doing this.