SUMMARY: /etc/install/disk_info.* creation?

From: Carlo Tiana (carlo@white.stanford.edu)
Date: Thu Oct 10 1991 - 04:57:14 CDT


A couple of days ago, I wrote:

>I am trying to install a diskless client on my server, and add_client
>fails with the error message:
>/etc/install/disk_info.sd2: cannot read file.
>Looking in /etc/install I noticed I have disk_info.??? files for some
>of my didsks but not others (that I think were not there when the server
>was installed...). Can anyone tell me how to create these files for the
>missing disks (is there any way othre than manually)?
>Thanks a lot,
>Carlo Tiana.

Well, noone actually suggested an "approved" solution, but creative answers
certainly came through. Since the basic problem was indeed to add a client,
some deal directly with methods for that, some deal with the question of
making the d*mn files in order to accomplish that task through the
add_client script. The root problem is that the add_client program is
BROKEN (as far as I am concerned) if parts of a client's filesystem
reside on a disk that was not present when you first filled in the
"assign disk info" of suinstall when you installed the server!

The solutions suggested were:
-run suninstall to assign disk info and have it create the files. Well, I
actually tried this on a test machine (not the server). This path has much
promise (assuming you have all the programs in /usr/etc/install) and
assuming you tread very lightly, since you are faking an installation....
(I added the client to a live, busy system).
-backup/restore an existing (similar) client, and tweak the appropriate
files on the client structure as well as the server's files. Problems with
this are: you must have something close (I had no clients of the same arch
as the one I was adding) and you gotta remember all those little files that
get looked at. I thought that this also had promise, but not too much in my
case.
-final solution (and what I did, to some extent): clone one of the existing
/etc/install/disk_info files (you have to have one if you had any disks on
your server when you installed it!!!? :-) and tweak it using relevant
information that you can gather, in a conservative way. Ie do go ahead and
calculate the appropriate numbers using dkinfo, and do put "y"'s where it
says 'preserve='. If this doesn't make too much sense, look at the files
you have and it will be clearer. In addition, although some of my files
(for disks with many partitions) were discouragingly long, the actual disk
I was trying to use was just 1 1 Gig partition, making the job quite easy.

Thanks to all who replied - must have been an esoteric one as I had <100
answers this time!
Carlo.

From: Jiri Dvorak <dvorak@iam.unibe.ch>
From: erueg@cfgauss.uni-math.gwdg.de (Eckhard Rueggeberg)
From: mikulska@ece.UCSD.EDU (Margaret Mikulska)
From: kevins@Aus.Sun.COM (Kevin Sheehan {Consulting Poster Child})



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