Sorry, I had to repair my test systems which took some time.
Am 31.12.2020 um 23:26 schrieb Chris Murphy
<lists(a)colorremedies.com>:
On Thu, Dec 31, 2020 at 8:12 AM Peter Boy <pboy(a)uni-bremen.de> wrote:
>
> I am doing some test installations to contribute some of our internal documentation
for Fedora Server documentation. Thereby a problem with the BiOSboot partition occurred
again.
>
>
> To set up the system with RAID 1, manual partitioning must be performed during
installation. I have created in the Anaconda GUI:
> - BIOSboot Partition
> - /boot as default partition and changed to raid 1
> - /ROOT as LVM changed to raid 1 as well (and some additional LVs in that VG)
>
>
> The installation aborted with the error message:
>
> "The following error occurred while installing the boot loader. The system will
not be bootable. Do you want to ignore this and continue with the installation?
> Boot loader install failed"
>
>
> Anaconda creates BIOSboot only on the first hard disk, but then tries to install grub
also on the 2nd hard disk and fails because of the missing BIOSboot partition there.
>
> This was already discussed a long time ago and considered to create a BIOSboot
partition automatically when creating a GPT even without user action. However, concerns
were raised about this and the proposal was obviously not implemented.
>
> I have not found a way in the current Anaconda manual partition GUI to install
BIOSboot on the 2nd disk as well. My simple workaround was to boot a live system, set up
GPT and BIOSboot, shutdown, and then boot the Fedora Server installation image.
>
> The installation then went without a fuss. But is this the intended way? I suspect it
isn’t. I probably missed something.
...
As I fiddle with Custom UI, manually creating BIOS boot, the
Device(s)>Modify dialog claims this partition is on both devices. But
the installation summary only shows it on one.
Ir’s even worse. If you open the dialog box the first time, both disks are selected (if
you select two disks at the initial Installationdestination form. As soon as you click on
one of the disks it changes to non-selected and it is no longer possible to select both at
the same time.
And the installation
succeeds without failing.
storage.log shows the command: grub2-install --no-floppy /dev/vda
I tried several time. As soon as you install a /boot partition on RAID the installation
issues a warning, the system would not be bootable if you proceed.
If you ignore the warning, the system boots up. In storage.log you find:
INFO:program:Running in chroot '/mnt/sysroot'...
grub2-install --no-floppy /dev/sda
INFO:program:Installing for i386-pc platform.
INFO:program:Installation finished. No error reported.
...
INFO:program:Running in chroot '/mnt/sysroot'... grub2-install --no-floppy
/dev/sdb
INFO:program:Installing for i386-pc platform.
INFO:program:grub2-install: warning: ../grub-core/partmap/gpt.c:190:this GPT partition
label contains no BIOS Boot
Partition; embedding won't be possible.
INFO:program:grub2-install: error: embedding is not possible, but this is required for
RAID and LVM install.
DEBUG:program:Return code: 1
...
Anaconda analyses the problem correctly, but unfortunately does not provide a fix
I'd characterize this primarily as a bug. But the most central
problem
is that esoteric bootloader related things should not exist in a GUI
installer. The installer should just do the right thing and present no
options at all whatsoever to the user.
A Fedora Server installation will probably run disks in RAID mode quite often. In this
respect, this bug is decidedly "uncomely“. HD larger than 2 TB are becoming more and
more affordable and are likely to become more common even in small installations.
I tried the „Advanced Custom (Bildet-GUI“. Here, it is possible to install a BIOSboot on
multiple disks and if you do so the installation of RAID 1 system succeeds without
failing. But it is much more complex and time-consuming (and error-prone).
Question is, how are we going to write an installation guide as a Fedora project. Do we
want a "simple" way (ie. Booting a live system before installation and preparing
the disks on the command line) or a "Fedora Tools" way (cumbersome Blivet GUI)?