Docs or recipe for Hardy?

Are you using the Desktop, alternate or server CD?

Using the network install for server.

Try to manually set up all the filesystem and raid volumes using partman. You should define at least one system to be mounted on "/" which will be the root partition

Hi Jinnk,

Just wondering if you had managed to get the partman-auto-raid command working. I am also trying to preseed a raid configuration.

The partman-auto-raid udeb doesn't appear to be loaded when the other partitioning modules are. I tried adding the following to my preseed file, but it had no affect:
d-i preseed/early_command string anna-install partman-auto-raid

*sigh* I would really like to get this working, especially as the Ubuntu wiki and Debian tutorials all say that it *is* possible to preseed a raid configuration.

Any updates on this??

Not from me Joe, I have been forced to setup the RAID stuff manually when I build servers for now. Looks like the only real solution is to use FAI instead (I haven't personally got around to setting it up yet though).

http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/
http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/240

If you do try using FAI please post back and let me know how you got on with it ;-)

Hi Bowen, thanks for the response. Unfortunately, I've done FAI
previously and AFAIC it's a dirty hack. I've used kickstart for years,
and it's really unbelievable that this isn't working, or is so difficult
I still haven't gotten it working yet. It's outlined in the hardy docs
like it just works, but it doesn't. I'm very frustrated at this point.

I've rebuilt a complete install tree just to include the
partman-auto-raid udeb and still it doesn't seem to be included.
early_command anna-install won't work because it queues the install for
later. I was going to modify anna-install, but I just felt like I had
already gone too far. Someone, somewhere, has got to have this working.
I just don't understand why this gets such little coverage. Someone has
got to have this working...
Bowen wrote:
> Question #36547 on partman-auto-raid in ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/partman-auto-raid/+question/36547
>
> Bowen proposed the following answer:
> Not from me Joe, I have been forced to setup the RAID stuff manually
> when I build servers for now. Looks like the only real solution is to
> use FAI instead (I haven't personally got around to setting it up yet
> though).
>
> http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/
> http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/240
>
> If you do try using FAI please post back and let me know how you got on
> with it ;-)
>
>

We used to do this successfully, although I wouldn't recommend relying on it.

d-i preseed/early_command string dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M count=30 && dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=1M count=30 && wget -O /tmp/partman-auto-raid.udeb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/p/partman-auto-raid/partman-auto-raid_7_all.udeb && udpkg -i /tmp/partman-auto-raid.udeb

I ended up getting this working by adding this early_command:

d-i preseed/early_command string wget -O /tmp/partman-auto-raid.udeb http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/universe/p/partman-auto-raid/partman-auto-raid_7_all.udeb && udpkg -i /tmp/partman-auto-raid.udeb

I think Mathias, one of the Ubuntu Server Team guys clued me in on that gem via the mailing list.

After adding this early_command, following the docs actually works. Oh and make sure you don't have any lines that only contain whitespace. That will cause the debian-installer to fail without a meaningful error (last I checked for hardy at least).