I've had a disaster on my home network server; the partition table on the disk containing / has become corrupted, and testdisk has not enabled me to recover the table. If anyone can help with this I should be grateful. However, that is not what I am writing about.
I've installed a substitute box - and HP MicroServer - which by a miracle has CentOS-5.6 installed on it. Now I'm wondering what is the best way to install CentOS-6, given that there is no CD/DVD driver on this machine.
I have access to the internet, so I can download the CD/DVD . I know I could install through a USB stick; I'm just wondering if there is a more direct route.
I should look this up, but I'm rather weary after installing dovecot, httpd, etc, and thought I'd take a short cut by asking you gurus.
On Sun, 2011-08-28 at 14:52 +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:
I've had a disaster on my home network server; the partition table on the disk containing / has become corrupted, and testdisk has not enabled me to recover the table. If anyone can help with this I should be grateful.
Have you used testdisk to find and copy files to another partition ?
When using testdisk I found the best practise is NOT to attempt to rewrite anything. Extracting as many files as possible off the bad partition should be the priority.
Always Learning wrote:
I've had a disaster on my home network server; the partition table on the disk containing / has become corrupted, and testdisk has not enabled me to recover the table. If anyone can help with this I should be grateful.
Have you used testdisk to find and copy files to another partition ?
I didn't see an option on testdisk to find (and copy) files. I only saw options to guess the correct partition table, which in my case did not seem to work.
Actually, all the missing data is on extended partitions. I think if I could find where /dev/sda4 begins I might be able to determine where the logical partitions inside /dev/sda4 start and end?
On 08/29/2011 06:36 AM Timothy Murphy wrote:
Always Learning wrote:
I've had a disaster on my home network server; the partition table on the disk containing / has become corrupted, and testdisk has not enabled me to recover the table. If anyone can help with this I should be grateful.
Have you used testdisk to find and copy files to another partition ?
I didn't see an option on testdisk to find (and copy) files. I only saw options to guess the correct partition table, which in my case did not seem to work.
Actually, all the missing data is on extended partitions. I think if I could find where /dev/sda4 begins I might be able to determine where the logical partitions inside /dev/sda4 start and end?
fdisk -l
ken wrote:
Actually, all the missing data is on extended partitions. I think if I could find where /dev/sda4 begins I might be able to determine where the logical partitions inside /dev/sda4 start and end?
fdisk -l
If the information given by this were correct I would have no problem ...
Always Learning wrote:
I've had a disaster on my home network server; the partition table on the disk containing / has become corrupted, and testdisk has not enabled me to recover the table. If anyone can help with this I should be grateful.
Have you used testdisk to find and copy files to another partition ?
Just a note in praise of testdisk.
Basically, I ran testdisk as root, and chose the disk /dev/sdb . After choosing Intel/PC as partition protocol, I ran "Analyse". This took about half-an-hour (with a 2TB disk). When it finished, it listed the partitions. On choosing one (by moving up/down and clicking) I typed "P" and it showed the contents of one partition (/Photos). The contents of the other partitions were visible in the same way, so I clicked on Write to write the new partition table to disk, and all was well again.
The only oddity was that two partitions were merged, so that there was one fewer than before. But fortunately there was nothing of importance in these partitions. (One was a swap partition, and the other contained Fedora-13.)
On 08/28/11 6:52 AM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Now I'm wondering what is the best way to install CentOS-6, given that there is no CD/DVD driver on this machine.
I have access to the internet, so I can download the CD/DVD . I know I could install through a USB stick; I'm just wondering if there is a more direct route.
A) PXE boot and do a network installation aka kickstart. This would, of course, require another 'nix system on the LAN running DHCP, TFTP, and NFS
B) boot a USB stick with the Netinstall image, and point it at a http URL of the centos repository, which could be either a local mirror or one on the internet somewhere as long as your internet is reasonably fast and stable. I'd suggest doing a bare minimal install this way, then adding other stuff post-install with yum.
On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 1:55 PM, John R Pierce pierce@hogranch.com wrote:
On 08/28/11 6:52 AM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Now I'm wondering what is the best way to install CentOS-6, given that there is no CD/DVD driver on this machine.
I have access to the internet, so I can download the CD/DVD . I know I could install through a USB stick; I'm just wondering if there is a more direct route.
A) PXE boot and do a network installation aka kickstart. This would, of course, require another 'nix system on the LAN running DHCP, TFTP, and NFS
B) boot a USB stick with the Netinstall image, and point it at a http URL of the centos repository, which could be either a local mirror or one on the internet somewhere as long as your internet is reasonably fast and stable. I'd suggest doing a bare minimal install this way, then adding other stuff post-install with yum.
Or, boot the Netinstall image and do an NFS intall from your local copy.
Les Mikesell wrote:
Now I'm wondering what is the best way to install CentOS-6, given that there is no CD/DVD driver on this machine.
I have access to the internet, so I can download the CD/DVD . I know I could install through a USB stick; I'm just wondering if there is a more direct route.
Or, boot the Netinstall image and do an NFS intall from your local copy.
Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately I don't have a second desktop on my local LAN. Will Netinstall allow me to use a partition on the same box that it is running on?
On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 5:47 AM, Timothy Murphy gayleard@eircom.net wrote:
Les Mikesell wrote:
Now I'm wondering what is the best way to install CentOS-6, given that there is no CD/DVD driver on this machine.
I have access to the internet, so I can download the CD/DVD . I know I could install through a USB stick; I'm just wondering if there is a more direct route.
Or, boot the Netinstall image and do an NFS intall from your local copy.
Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately I don't have a second desktop on my local LAN. Will Netinstall allow me to use a partition on the same box that it is running on?
I think there is a way to do that, but haven't you had enough trouble yet that you see the wisdom in having a backup system or at least a removable/external drive that you can use for backups and installs?
Les Mikesell wrote:
but haven't you had enough trouble yet that you see the wisdom in having a backup system or at least a removable/external drive that you can use for backups and installs?
I do actually run BackupPC each night, but I didn't include / among the directories to backup, and now realise there are many config files and scripts I wrote, and I have now forgotten exactly what I did!
On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 5:47 AM, Timothy Murphy gayleard@eircom.net wrote:
Or, boot the Netinstall image and do an NFS intall from your local copy.
Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately I don't have a second desktop on my local LAN. Will Netinstall allow me to use a partition on the same box that it is running on?
Local hard drive install instructions: http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Installati...
Les Mikesell wrote:
Local hard drive install instructions: http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-
US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Installation_Guide/s1-steps-hd-installs- x86.html
Thanks. I'll try that.
John R Pierce wrote:
On 08/28/11 6:52 AM, Timothy Murphy wrote:
Now I'm wondering what is the best way to install CentOS-6, given that there is no CD/DVD driver on this machine.
I have access to the internet, so I can download the CD/DVD . I know I could install through a USB stick; I'm just wondering if there is a more direct route.
A) PXE boot and do a network installation aka kickstart. This would, of course, require another 'nix system on the LAN running DHCP, TFTP, and NFS
Thanks for the suggestions. I've always found PXEboot extraordinarily difficult to use. I think I succeeded on one occasion, and failed on many others. I usually tried using cobbler, but as I said with little success.
B) boot a USB stick with the Netinstall image, and point it at a http URL of the centos repository, which could be either a local mirror or one on the internet somewhere as long as your internet is reasonably fast and stable. I'd suggest doing a bare minimal install this way, then adding other stuff post-install with yum.
I guess this is probably the easiest solution. I haven't downloaded CentOS-6 yet, so I would have to download it anyway. As you say, starting with a minimal download is probably best.
But I had hoped there was some simple way of abstracting vmlinux and initrd from the CD or DVD image, and adding a stanza to grub.conf to boot from those?
From: Timothy Murphy gayleard@eircom.net
I've installed a substitute box - and HP MicroServer - which by a miracle has CentOS-5.6 installed on it. Now I'm wondering what is the best way to install CentOS-6, given that there is no CD/DVD driver on this machine.
If you have the management card, you could mount a virtual DVD and boot on it. You could also add the setup grub entry to your grub, and put the ISO files on a local HD (that will not be overwritten).
JD
John Doe wrote:
From: Timothy Murphy gayleard@eircom.net
I've installed a substitute box - and HP MicroServer - which by a miracle has CentOS-5.6 installed on it. Now I'm wondering what is the best way to install CentOS-6, given that there is no CD/DVD driver on this machine.
You could also add the setup grub entry to your grub, and put the ISO files on a local HD (that will not be overwritten).
Could you be a bit more precise, please. What do you mean by the "setup grub entry"?
From: Timothy Murphy gayleard@eircom.net
John Doe wrote:
From: Timothy Murphy gayleard@eircom.net
I've installed a substitute box - and HP MicroServer - which by a miracle has CentOS-5.6 installed on it. Now I'm wondering what is the best way to install CentOS-6, given that there is no CD/DVD driver on this machine.
You could also add the setup grub entry to your grub, and put the ISO files on a local HD (that will not be overwritten).
Could you be a bit more precise, please. What do you mean by the "setup grub entry"?
I really think it would be easier to make a USB key/disk... But, I tried the following yearsss ago... so did not test if it is still working... Copy DVD files to HD (if netinstall, you don't need to copy isos): cp /mnt/cdrom/syslinux/vmlinuz /boot/vmlinuz-c6 cp /mnt/cdrom/syslinux/initrd.img /boot/initrd-c6.img mkdir -p /path/to/c6/images cp /mnt/cdrom/images/install.img /path/to/c6/images/ cp *.iso /path/to/c6/ Add the entry to your grub (change the root to match your setup): title CentOS 6 Install root (hd0,0) kernel vmlinuz-c6 initrd initrd-c6.img You could maybe also directly specify where the images/isos are: repo=hd:sd??:/path/to/c6 And be sure that "/path/to/c6" is not formated as you install... Again, not tested at all... And I guess you will have 1 try only... if it fails somewhere in the middle of the install, you won't have a 2nd chance
JD
John Doe wrote:
And I guess you will have 1 try only... if it fails somewhere in the middle of the install, you won't have a 2nd chance
Thanks for your suggestion, which I think is more or less the advice in http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en- US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Installation_Guide/s1-steps-hd-installs- x86.html, mentioned in another post.
I'll be installing CentOS-6 in a new partition, so failure won't be very serious.
Hello,
On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 1:22 PM, John Doe jdmls@yahoo.com wrote:
From: Timothy Murphy gayleard@eircom.net
I really think it would be easier to make a USB key/disk... But, I tried the following yearsss ago... so did not test if it is still working... Copy DVD files to HD (if netinstall, you don't need to copy isos): cp /mnt/cdrom/syslinux/vmlinuz /boot/vmlinuz-c6 cp /mnt/cdrom/syslinux/initrd.img /boot/initrd-c6.img mkdir -p /path/to/c6/images cp /mnt/cdrom/images/install.img /path/to/c6/images/ cp *.iso /path/to/c6/ Add the entry to your grub (change the root to match your setup): title CentOS 6 Install root (hd0,0) kernel vmlinuz-c6 initrd initrd-c6.img You could maybe also directly specify where the images/isos are: repo=hd:sd??:/path/to/c6 And be sure that "/path/to/c6" is not formated as you install... Again, not tested at all...
This is working with Centos 5 but does not working with Centos 6 for me. Instead I copy the *content* of DVD to the specified directory not the ISO file itself. Looks like Centos 6 does not recognize ISO file as installation medium and use the specified folder as a real folder. Take a look on this:
http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
Bye, a
-
Always Learning -
Artifex Maximus -
John Doe -
John R Pierce -
ken -
Les Mikesell -
Timothy Murphy