Re: [coLinux-devel] Attempting to make coLinux work ... tackling problems running Anaconda

[Bill C. R. <do...@fr...>]

As a follow-up, I figured out a better way to debug and traced the
problem in NetworkManager.   It occurred to me I could run anaconda in
a chroot environment.

It seems that NetworkManager will ignore any device without an
associated driver.  e.g. an info.linux.driver entry for the
net.originating_device.   I will try patching NetworkManager to
by-pass this limitation, and see where that gets us.

Bill

On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 11:46 PM, Bill C. Riemers <do...@fr...> wrote:
> I spent a number of hours this weekend attempting to get Anaconda to
> work with coLinux.   coLinux has come a long way, and even the Live CD
> almost works.  I would like to briefly describe some of the problems I
> found, some of the solutions, and where I am stuck right now.
>
> The biggest problem I've had so far is debugging.   I can find no way
> to scroll in the console window.  So tracebacks, and errors quickly
> appear on the screen and disappear.  Is there anyway to redirect the
> console output to a log file or such?  If so, it would make life much
> easier.   For now, I've just been entering print statements in code,
> and sleep commands to give me time to read the output.   It doesn't
> always tell me where it crashed, but it does help me figure out where
> it didn't crash.
>
> The first problem I found is anaconda needs the driver modules.  I
> found simply appending the modules to the initrd.img file works just
> fine to fix this:
>      gunzip -c initrd.img > initrd.cpio
>      tar xfz vmlinux-modules.tar.gz
>      find lib/modules |cpio -o -H newc -A -F initrd.cpio
>      gzip -c initrd.cpio > initrd.img
>
> The first code problem I found is the capacity for cobd devices is
> listed as 16.  As none removable devices, anaconda expect the size
> value to be valid.  However, the size is always read as 0, so anaconda
> skip past the devices.   On a hunch, I added a open command into the
> code, and found once a cobd device has been opened, the size value is
> nolonger 0, so anaconda will recognize it.  So the solution is coLinux
> either needs to mark all cobd devices as removable, or it needs to
> initialize the size parameter.
>
> The next problem I came across is that anaconda expects CD's to have
> the cd capacity set.   Since coLinux treats all cobd devices the same,
> none are marked as CD.  So again, I did a quick hack and modified my
> build of anaconda to consider all coLinux devices as both CD's and
> hard disks.
>
> Next, for some reason NetManager in the initrd.img is unable to
> initialize the network for slirp network, even when I explicitly
> specify the networking parameters.   I've had similar problems in the
> past with qemu, and managed to get around it by using a different
> networking setup.  I will try the same for coLinux, but for now this
> problem stopped me dead in my tracks.
>
> Now, you might think as I did, that we don't need networking.  Just
> specify an ISO image and install from that.   However, the problem is
> the only headless option for anaconda is to use vnc.  But in order to
> use vnc, we need networking.  Otherwise anaconda consistently crashes
> trying to set-up graphical display.  I am not certain that having
> networking, and thus vnc will avoid this crash, but I am certain it
> can not work without networking for a headless install.
>
> The last sticker is going to be the partitioning.  In that there seems
> to be no capacity in anaconda to deal with hard disks of type 16.
> However, once I get past the networking problem I will try and add
> this capability to anaconda.
>
> Any insight others have, especially in the NetworkManager problem and
> how to debug this code would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Bill
>