SGI XFS Filesystem 0.9 PreRelease Red Hat 7.0 Installer Caveats

This page provides a list of caveats you must consider when installing SGI XFS Pre-release 0.9 with the Red Hat 7.0 Installer. For general installation instructions, see Installing from the SGI XFS for Red Hat 7.0 Installer.

These caveats apply only to the Installer itself. Please see XFS for Linux Pre-Release 0.9 Caveats for XFS Filesystem caveats.

The SGI XFS Pre-release 0.9 / Red Hat 7.0 installer will work with your existing Red Hat 7.0 installation media to install a Red Hat 7.0 system with XFS on root, or any other partition, right out of the box.

This installer is based on a development snapshot of Red Hat's Anaconda installer. We have listed known problems but there are probably others waiting to be discovered.

• This installer requires the Red Hat "respin" discs.

  MD5SUMS:
  fc9c2c23b02d2a35b75845530db81743  7.0-i386-respin-disc1.iso
  0e77615754f281363c231b2d4b1806bb  7.0-i386-respin-disc2.iso

  Or, check the version of "up2date" in RedHat/RPMS. If you do not have up2date version 2.0.5-3, then you do not have a "respin" disc.

  To use early RH 7.0 discs, see Early RH 7.0 CD instructions.

• When using this installer on a system with data, make sure that full backups are performed before attempting the install.

• Upgrade installations are not supported, and are disabled. This feature will be supported in a future release.

• Kickstart installations work, but are not thoroughly tested. Add "--fs xfs" to the "part" command to create XFS partitions

• devfs is enabled in the installed kernels. Please see the devfs FAQ. In particular, see the changes needed to allow users to run "startx." You may also need to reconfigure GPM and XFree86 to use the correct mouse device.

• The devfs RPM is missing a file which will help with autoloading modules. Simply place modules.devfs in your /etc directory to fix this.

• Due to a bug found with device permissions on read-only filesystems, placing /dev in an xfs filesystem can lead to a failure to boot. The kernel rpms on the cd are built with devfs turned on which masks this problem. Before turning devfs off you will need to obtain a fixed version of the kernel from the oss web site. Note that turning devfs off will not require any changes to the rest of the system; Redhat 7 is configured to work with or without devfs in the kernel.

• Note that XFS filesystem support in the installed kernels is compiled as modules, as is IDE disk support, so you will need an initial ramdisk to boot the kernels. The installation process should create this for you, but if you recompile or update your kernels, be aware that unless you compile support into the kernel for both your root filesystem type and for the root device type, you will need to rebuild your initial ramdisk (initrd).

• Your system will be a stock RedHat 7.0 install. Several updated RPMs have been released from Red Hat for security and bug fixes. Please check the Red Hat Linux Errata for more information. However, see the warning about updating kernel RPMs (below).

• Do not upgrade your kernel to subsequent Red Hat RPMs, or you will be unable to access your XFS partitions. SGI will release XFS-capable kernel RPMs from time to time.

• The Anaconda version on the CD is an early 7.1 release which is required to support a linux 2.4.0 kernel install . This version is known to be unstable and may crash on occasion, particularly when using the "select individual packages mode". Please report any bugs found in the installer to linux-xfs@oss.sgi.com. Any bugs determined to be a RedHat bug will be forwarded on.

• Some systems with particular ide chip sets are known to have problems at install time that prevent the initial ram disk from being generated. The fix for this problem is to reboot the system into rescue mode from the install CD by typing "linux rescue" at the boot prompt, and then executing the following commands. (If your / and /boot are on the same partition, simply ignore the lines pertaining to /boot.)

  
  cd /tmp
  mknod hda<partition # of root fs> b 3 
  mknod hda<partition # of /boot fs> b 3 
  mount hda<part#> /mnt/A
  mount hda<part#>  /mnt/A/boot
  chroot /mnt/A
  /sbin/mkinitrd /boot/initrd-2.4.0-SGI_XFS_PR.img  2.4.0-SGI_XFS_PR
  vi /etc/lilo.conf
  add to the correct kernel entry:
          initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.0-SGI_XFS_PR.img
  /sbin/lilo -v
  exit (out of chrooted shell)
  umount /mnt/A/boot
  umount /mnt/A
  
  

  Reboot the system.

• Matrox Millennium video cards may not work with this installer. Use text mode install if the graphical install appears to hang. If you use text mode install, it is recommended that you not configure X from the installer; instead, bring the system up after the install and configure by hand.
• Making a boot floppy may not work due to the size of the kernel and necessary modules. Instead of a boot floppy, the install CD can be used for rescue by typing "linux rescue" at the boot prompt.
• if you get an "invalid video mode" at boot time, simply press and choose a video mode from the list ("0" should work fine).

Early RH 7.0 CD Instructions

• System Environment/Base/up2date
• System Environment/Base/up2date-gnome
System Environment/Daemons/LPRng
• Applications/System/usermode

When the installer issues a warning about missing dependencies, choose the third option, "Ignore package dependencies". The install should continue, and when your system is up and running, you must go back and install the above packages from the Red Hat updates.