[ale] Headless, Consoleless, DVDless, NetInstall?

[Brandon Checketts]

I think that it should be possible to convert a working, live system to
use LVM.  Having a separate /boot partition and/or two drives would be
ideal, but you might be able to get it done with one and some clever
partitioning.

The basic process:

1- Boot off your running system, Install the lvm packages
2- Create your LVM partitions on a spare disk or spare partition
3- Copy your working filesystem to the LVM partition
4- Build a new initrd image that includes LVM support
5- Configure grub to boot from the new initrd and to the new LVM
partition  (and fallback to your working system)
5- Reboot onto the LVM, verify that everything works
  5.5 (debug, bang your head against the wall, etc)
6- Delete the original partition and configure LVM to use the space it
was occupying.


I have done the basic process with converting to a RAID1 system, but
never with LVM.  I blogged about it here
http://www.brandonchecketts.com/archives/setting-up-software-raid-on-a-running-centos-5-server
and have a few links there that might offer some help (all have to do
with converting to RAID though)

My first time through took some trial and error.  Obviously, it would be
good to try the process on a local box first so that you can see the
console to aid in debugging.   Hopefully the data center staff can at
least read console messages to you and reboot in a timely manner.


Good luck,
Brandon Checketts

Richard Bronosky wrote:
> I left off:
> 3. No on-site. That's part of the no physical access.
> 
> Let me reiterate that on 3 of our 12 servers I have already paid for
> the RHEL4-without_LVM to RHEL5-with_LVM upgrade, then setup Xen
> myself. The biggest problem I have is that it takes a week or longer
> for each one. I don't know how I'm going to allocate 9 weeks to
> finish.
> 
> On 4/17/09, Kenneth Ratliff <lists at noctum.net> wrote:
> On Apr 17, 2009, at 4:21 PM, Richard Bronosky wrote:
>>>> I guess I could have focused the discussion better. Instead of saying
>>>> I loosely understand kickstart, I should have asked if it is possible
>>>> to remotely setup LVM on a RHEL4 box that you have no physical access
>>>> to. That is really what is missing for me.
> The real kink in your plans seems to be getting your LVM setup
> correctly, at least as far as the / partition goes. That's a tough
> problem to work around with no remote access and a company that's not
> willing to work with you.
> 
> Honestly, it sounds like all you *can* do is pay them to install it
> with the partition scheme and LVM setup that you want and then work
> from there, or to travel onsite and do it all yourself (assuming
> they'd allow even *that*)
> 
>>
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