PartMan
This page is about partitioning with preseed. See Ubuntu installer for other parts of the installation process and preseed options.
Background Info
Debian preseed's partman options are an incomprehensible automatic partitioning language.{{fact}}
Help Files
These files are in the Debian and Ubuntu packages, and give some explanation
Our implementation
Most hosts don't have LVM, only the boxes with arrays. In the directory /srv/autoinstall on brewster there should already be a file that handles the partition layout for your host(s), and it should already be included in netboot.cfg. If not and you are automating this for the first time, create a config file with a name descriptive of the host(s). For example, we have apache.cfg, db.cfg. You can steal from one of the existing files as a base.
Config language
<owner> <question name> <question type> <value>
<owner>: "d-i" which stands for Debian Installer.
<question name>: partman-auto, partman-auto-raid and partman-auto-lvm are the packages that handle automatic partitioning of various types, and some of the questions (prompts) issued by them are described here: [1]
<question type> says what sort of value to expect (eg string, boolean, select (for a menu)...)
<question value> this is where you put the answer that you would otherwise be entering interactively
NOTE that after the question type you can put only one space or tab; any other whitespace will get stuffed in at the front of the value, which you probably don't want.
Dissecting a Semi-working configuration
(by semi-working, I mean that you must hit <enter> twice, but not answer any meaningful questions.)
# Automatic software RAID 1 with LVM partitioning d-i partman-auto/method string raid
This sentence makes partman know that it will be making a raid
# Use the first two disks d-i partman-auto/disk string /dev/sda /dev/sdb
after d-i partman-auto/disk you must put the list of hard drives that are going to be used
# Define physical partitions
d-i partman-auto/expert_recipe string \
multiraid :: \
400000 1000 9500000 raid \
$primary{ } method{ raid } \
. \
4000 1200 4100 linux-swap \
$primary{ } method{ swap } format{ } \
.
An interesting thing about partman is that you can put everything on one line, or you can break lines using the character "\". Use a "." in between hard drives. $primary{ } is needed to make the partition a primary partition. method { } is used to tell it what type to format. You can use swap, raid, or format. format { } tells partman to format the partition. Don't put this statement in a section that you will be using for the raid. use_filesystem{ } makes partman use a file system (don't know why this isn't done by the filesystem command) filesystem{ X } use ext3, murderfs, xfs, etc in here to tell it what filesystem to run mountpoint{ X } use things like /, /mnt/sda3, etc
Note that the sizes listed must fit on the physical disks - using 950000 1000 995000 will work fine on a 1T disk but fail on a 250G disk. The characteristics of 'fail' are that it throws you back to the screen that asks "Guided whole disk, guided xxx, or manual?".
# Parameters are:
# <raidtype> <devcount> <sparecount> <fstype> <mountpoint> \
# <devices> <sparedevices>
d-i partman-auto-raid/recipe string \
1 2 0 ext3 / \
/dev/sda1#/dev/sdb1 \
.
This snippet is telling us to make a raid 1, with 2 devices, 0 spares, ext3 filesystem, mounted at /, and across /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2
d-i partman-md/confirm boolean true
Theoretically now it confirms stuff automatically. It doesn't. Partman lies
d-i partman-md/device_remove_md boolean true
This lets partman remove any existing raids
d-i partman/confirm_write_new_label boolean true d-i partman/choose_partition select finish d-i partman/confirm boolean true d-i partman-lvm/device_remove_lvm boolean true d-i mdadm/boot_degraded boolean true
Most of these possibly do what they appear to do.
Boot degraded is important - if we have a disk failure we'd still like the system to boot, just warn us.
Dissecting another config
# Application server specific configuration
# Implementation specific hack:
d-i partman-auto/init_automatically_partition select 20some_device__________/var/lib/partman/devices/=dev=sda
d-i partman-auto/method string regular
d-i partman-auto/disk string /dev/sda
d-i partman/choose_partition select Finish partitioning and write changes to disk
d-i partman/confirm boolean true
# Note, expert_recipe wants to fill up the entire disk
# See http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/svn/debian-installer/installer/doc/devel/partman-auto-recipe.txt
d-i partman-auto/expert_recipe string apache : 3000 5000 8000 ext3 $primary{ } $bootable{ } method{ format } format{ } use_filesystem{ }
filesystem{ ext3 } mountpoint{ / } . 1000 1000 1000 linux-swap method{ swap } format{ } . 64 1000 10000000 jfs method{ format } format{ } use_fil
esystem{ } filesystem{ jfs } mountpoint{ /a } .
d-i partman-auto/choose_recipe apache
# Preseeding of other packages
fontconfig fontconfig/enable_bitmaps boolean true
These are preseed file entries that get fed to prompts issued by the installer. Syntax:
<owner> <question name> <question type> <value>
<owner>: "d-i" which stands for Debian Installer.
<question name>: partman-auto, partman-auto-raid and partman-auto-lvm are the packages that handle automatic partitioning of various types, and some of the questions (prompts) issued by them are described here: [2]
<question type> says what sort of value to expect (eg string, boolean, select (for a menu)...)
<question value> this is where you put the answer that you would otherwise be entering interactively
NOTE that after the question type you can put only one space or tab; any other whitespace will get stuffed in at the front of the value, which you probably don't want.
The first few lines of the sample config file should be obvious: select the device, choose the partition method and confirm. After that an "expert recipe" for partioning is defined, and given the name "apache". This allows it to be chosen later from the list of recipes.
Let's look at the particular recipe: it says
- 3000 5000 8000 ext3 $primary{ } $bootable{ } method{ format } format{ } use_filesystem{ } filesystem{ ext3 } mountpoint{ / }
- 3000: minumum size of partition in mb
- 5000: priority if it and other listed partitions are vying for space on the disk (this is compared with the priorities of the other partitions)
- 8000: maximum size of partition in mb (80GB; this is for 80GB disks, which the apaches all have.)
- ext3: filesystem type
- $primary{ }: this is a primary, not logical partition
- $bootable{ }: this is a bootable partition
- method{ format }: set to format to format the partition, to "keep" to not format, and to "swap" for swap partitions
- format{ }: also needed so the partition will be formatted
- use_filesystem{ }: this partition will have a filesystem on it (it won't be swap, lvm, etc)
- filesystem{ ext3 }: what filesystem it gets
- mountpoint{ / }: where it's mounted
The other two lines in the recipe should now be obvious.
- 1000 1000 1000 linux-swap method{ swap } format{ }
- 64 1000 10000000 jfs method{ format } format{ } use_filesystem{ } filesystem{ jfs } mountpoint{ /a }
Things that peter has found out
LVM:
I learned these bits when making mailman.cfg, so I'll be dragging things out of there.
(One of) The (many, many) weird thing(s) about partman is that partman-auto/expert_recipe is used for defining partitions on disks and logical volumes. How could this ever not be confusing!?!? I wanted to put some logical volumes on top of raid1, so here is what I did:
I started with a nice
d-i partman-auto/expert_recipe string \
multiraid :: \
5000 8000 16000 raid \
$primary{ } $lvmignore{ } method{ raid } \
. \
and
d-i partman-auto-raid/recipe string \
1 2 0 ext3 / \
/dev/sda1#/dev/sdb1 \
. \
Which yields a slice off of both sda and sdb 16GB large, raided together, ext3 formatted, mounted at /. That's some sweet root partition.
Next thing is in the partman-auto/expert-recipe I added
64 1000 10000000 raid \
$primary{ } $lvmignore { } method{ raid } \
. \
And in partman-auto-raid/recipe I added
1 2 0 lvm - \
/dev/sda2#/dev/sdb2 \
.
Where the first part is basically like "for sda/sdb, grab all remaining physical disk and partition them for some raid" and the second part is like "get those two partitions, raid them together, and let's use it for some LVM"
So now is the part where we make some LVM partitions. This all happens in partman-auto/expert_recipe. A lot of it seems wildly redundant, but so it goes. First, let's create some swap on the lvm, so we can grow it later if need be. For this, we use
4000 4000 4000 linux-swap \
$defaultignore{ } $lvmok{ } \
lv_name{ swap } method{ swap } format{ } \
. \
Which is (relatively) high priority. It probably would have been smarter to have used 100% as the upper bound, so that it was equal to the ram on the box. But this is fine. Still allows for performance tuning.
And now to create an xfs formatted logical volume with a mountpoint we put in
100 1000 300000 xfs \
$defaultignore{ } $lvmok{ } \
lv_name{ mailman } method{ format } format{ } \
use_filesystem{ } filesystem{ xfs } \
mountpoint{ /var/lib/mailman } \
. \
Relatively self explanitory options. A name is a name. method{ format } format{ } use_filesystem{ } filesystem{ xfs } seems like a rather obtuse way of saying "no really make me some xfs..." and the mountpoint is the mountpoint. We could have more of these as well. For the sake of completeness, I'll include the other logical volume in mailserver.cfg.
100 1000 60000 xfs \
$defaultignore{ } $lvmok{ } \
lv_name{ exim } method{ format } format{ } \
use_filesystem{ } filesystem{ xfs } \
mountpoint{ /var/spool/exim4 } \
.
You'll notice that these are the same priority, so if there isn't enough space, the ratio of the sizes will stay the same (after the swap is made).
Another couple of options use/notes:
d-i partman-auto-lvm/guided_size string 80%
That option is something we are fond of at WMF. It allows us to grow some partitions over time. Basically, it means that when making the logical volumes, to only use 80% of the available disk space. The means that if we need more swap later, or if we're running out of room on one partition, we can use some of the space.
Another take away is that basically in partman-auto/expert_recipe
$primary{ } $lvmignore{ }
means "make a physical partition" whereas
$defaultignore{ } $lvmok{ }
means "these are logical volumes."
This is what Peter knows.
Testing changes
partman can be quite obscure in what its results are, to make it easier to test changes a ganeti VM has been provisioned as d-i-test.eqiad.wmnet which is disposable in nature and has two 50G disks. This comes handy when testing recipes, the VM can boot off the network like bare metal does.
Operations
log in to ganeti:
ssh ganeti01.svc.eqiad.wmnet
VM operations:
sudo gnt-instance [shutdown|startup|reboot] d-i-test # console access sudo gnt-instance console d-i-test
if the console command shows no output it might be stuck on a d-i prompt and thus not refreshing, another cause of no output is that if the VM was unable to pxe-boot (check /var/log/syslog on the install server (carbon at the time of this writing).