zfs discuss - Jul 2009 - Install and boot from USB stick?

Hello,

Ive tried to find any hard information on how to install, and boot, opensolaris
from a USB stick. Ive seen a few people written a few sucessfull stories about
this, but I cant seem to get it to work.

The procedure:
Boot from LiveCD, insert USB drive, find it using `format'', start
installer. The USB stick it not found (just stands on "Finding
disks"). Remove USB stick, hit back in installer, insert USB stick again,
USB stick found, start installing.

At 19%, it just stands there. Have no idea why.

Suggestions?
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Hi
> Ive tried to find any hard information on how to install, and boot,
opensolaris from a USB stick. Ive seen a few people written a few sucessfull
stories about this, but I cant seem to get it to work.
> 
> The procedure:
> Boot from LiveCD, insert USB drive, find it using `format'', start
installer. The USB stick it not found (just stands on "Finding
disks"). Remove USB stick, hit back in installer, insert USB stick again,
USB stick found, start installing.
> 
> At 19%, it just stands there. Have no idea why.
> 
> Suggestions?

In my experience the system is actually installing just veeeery slowly.
have a look at the ZFS evil tuning guide and disable the ZIL while
installing. Really speeds up things. Don''t know why it''s so
slow on a
USB memory stick but good enough as work around and not really a risk as
it''s a fresh install anyway

Thomas


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GPG fingerprint: B1 EE D2 39 2C 82 26 DA  A5 4D E0 50 35 75 9E ED

Well that seem to work well! :) Still, now the issue have changed from not being
able to install to USB, to not being able to properly boot from USB.

The GRUB menu is presented, no problem there, and then the opensolaris progress
bar. But im unable to find a way to view any details on whats happening there.
The progress bar just keep scrolling and scrolling.

Suggestions?
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> The GRUB menu is presented, no problem there, and
> then the opensolaris progress bar. But im unable to
> find a way to view any details on whats happening
> there. The progress bar just keep scrolling and
> scrolling.
Press the ESC key; this should switch back from
graphics to text mode and most likely you''ll see
that the OS is waiting for some console user input.
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Hi:

On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 07:54, J?rgen Keil<no-reply at opensolaris.org>
wrote:
>> The GRUB menu is presented, no problem there, and
>> then the opensolaris progress bar. But im unable to
>> find a way to view any details on whats happening
>> there. The progress bar just keep scrolling and
>> scrolling.
>
> Press the ESC key; this should switch back from
> graphics to text mode and most likely you''ll see
> that the OS is waiting for some console user input.
I''ve found it only works for USB sticks up to 4GB :( If I tried a USB
stick bigeer than that, it didn''t boot.


Cheers.

-- 

Pablo M?ndez Hern?ndez

Well, here is the error:


<a href=''http://bildr.no/view/459154''><img
src=''http://bildr.no/thumb/459154.jpeg''
alt=''459154'' /></a>

Cant seem to find anything on google. Only thing i found were some source code
where it seems this error accour:
http://src.opensolaris.org/source/xref/onnv/onnv-gate/usr/src/uts/common/io/scsi/impl/scsi_subr.c

Suggestions?
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> I''ve found it only works for USB sticks up to 4GB :(
> If I tried a USB stick bigeer than that, it didn''t boot.
Works for me on 8GB USB sticks.

It is possible that the stick you''ve tried has some
issues with the Solaris USB drivers, and needs to
have one of the workarounds from the
scsa2usb.conf file enabled.
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> Well, here is the error:
> 
> ... usb stick reports(?) scsi error: medium may have changed ...
That''s strange.  The media in a flash memory
stick can''t be changed - although most sticks
report that they do have removable media.

Maybe this stick needs one of the workarounds
that can be enabled in /kernel/drv/scsa2usb.conf ?
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How can i implement that change, after installing the OS? Or do I need to build
my own livecd?
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> How can i implement that change, after installing the
> OS? Or do I need to build my own livecd?
Boot from the livecd, attach the usb stick,
open a terminal window, "pfexec bash" starts
a root shell, "zpool import -f rpool" should 
find and import the zpool from the usb stick.

Mount the root filesystem from the usb stick;
zfs set mountpoint=legacy rpool/ROOT/opensolaris
mount -F zfs rpool/ROOT/opensolaris /mnt

And edit /mnt/kernel/drv/scsa2usb.conf
E.g. try 

  attribute-override-list = "vid=* reduced-cmd-support=true";

Try to boot from the usb stick, using the "reboot" command.
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Nah, that didnt seem to do the trick.

Also tried this
http://blogs.sun.com/thaniwa/entry/en_opensolaris_installation_into_usb

But that either didnt seem to work. After unmounting and rebooting, i get the
same error msg from my previous post.

Dont know if there is much more to do... Suggestions?
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> Nah, that didnt seem to do the trick.
> 
>  After unmounting
> and rebooting, i get the same error msg from my
> previous post.
Did you get these scsi error messages during installation
to the usb stick, too?

Another thing that confuses me:  the unit attention /
medium may have changed message is using
"error level: retryable".  I think the sd disk driver
is supposed to just retry the read or write operation.
The message seems more like a warning message,
not a fatal error.
Are there any message with "Error level: fatal" ?
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> Did you get these scsi error messages during installation
> to the usb stick, too?
No not that I can recall. I do however the installation log mention something
about an error with grub, but I dont think that is related to this problem.
> Are there any message with "Error level: fatal" ? 
Not that I know of, however, i can check. But im unable to find out what to
change in grub to get verbose output rather than just the splashimage.

Wondering if there is some easier way to solve this. I could get a normal HDD
but the plan was to use 2x USB sticks in RAID1. Will use some more time on this
tough, it isn''t far now :)
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> > Are there any message with "Error level: fatal" ? 
> 
> Not that I know of, however, i can check. But im
> unable to find out what to change in grub to get
> verbose output rather than just the splashimage.
Edit the grub commands, delete all splashimage, 
foreground and background lines, and delete the
console=graphics option from the kernel$ line.

To enable verbose kernel message, append kernel
boot option " -v" at the end of the kernel$ boot
command line.
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No there was no error level fatal.

Well, here is what I have tried since:

a) I?ve tried to install a custom grub like described here:
http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=4755#c28
With that in place, I just get the grub prompt. I?ve tried to zpool import -f
rpool when this occoured (I read somewhere that it might help, but it didnt).

b) I noticed when booting from the livecd (text mode), with the newly installed
usb stick in, i get this:
[url=http://bildr.no/view/460143][img]http://bildr.no/thumb/460143.jpeg[/img][/url]
And then, when i imported the zpool to edit scsa2usb.conf, I get theese messages
again:
[url=http://bildr.no/view/460144][img]http://bildr.no/thumb/460144.jpeg[/img][/url]
Then, when i were done editing scsa2usb.conf, and rebooted, thoose same messages
appears once more.

c) I?ve tried to edit grub after rebooting from a fresh install, remoeving
splashimage, back/fron color, and ?console=graphics?, and adding ?-v? after
?kernel$?. When doing this, nothing happens. I press ?b?to boot, the menu list
disappears, but the grub image is still there (the splashimage where the logo is
placed down right).

d) I?ve noticed that after installation, the installation log says the same as
this:
http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=4755#c25


I?m running out of ideas. I?ve seen someone mention that you can replace
$ZFSBOOT (cant remember the correct variable name atm.) with the full path of
the usb stick in grub.

Im going to try OS 2008.05, 2008.11 and the latest dev build of OS from
genunix.org to see if any of thoose are able to create a proper installation.
I?ve seen so much complaints around theese three build regarding USB drives that
maybe it will work.
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> No there was no error level fatal.
> 
> Well, here is what I have tried since:
> 
> a) I?ve tried to install a custom grub like described here:
> http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=4755#c28
> With that in place, I just get the grub prompt. I?ve
> tried to zpool import -f rpool when this occoured (I
> read somewhere that it might help, but it didnt).
The grub in OS 2009.06 should not be affected by bug 4755
any more.

I think the grub from bug 4755 comment 28 is too old and
does not support the latest zpool format version updates;
so that it can''t read from a current (version 17?) zpool.
> b) I noticed when booting from the livecd (text mode),
> with the newly installed usb stick in, i get this:
>
[url=http://bildr.no/view/460143][img]http://bildr.no/thumb/460143.jpeg[/img][/url]
Hmm, seems that Solaris'' disk driver is receiving
bogus "mode sense" data from the usb stick ?

I think with scsa2usb.conf changed and reduced command
set enabled, we could avoid sending mode sense
commands to the usb flash stick...
> And then, when i imported the zpool to edit
> scsa2usb.conf, I get these messages again:
>
[url=http://bildr.no/view/460144][img]http://bildr.no/thumb/460144.jpeg[/img][/url]
> Then, when i were done editing scsa2usb.conf, and
> rebooted, thoose same messages appears once more.
Hmm, so we can get these unit attention messages
both when booted from the usb stick, and when 
booted from the live cd.
> c) I?ve tried to edit grub after rebooting from a
> fresh install, remoeving splashimage, back/fron
> color, and ?console=graphics?, and adding ?-v? after
> ?kernel$?. When doing this, nothing happens. I press
> ?b?to boot, the menu list disappears, but the grub
> image is still there (the splashimage where the logo
> is placed down right).
Should work, it should boot the kernel in text mode;
I just tested it with an OS 2009.06 install / virtualbox
guest.
> d) I?ve noticed that after installation, the
> installation log says the same as this:
> http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=4755#c25
> 
> 
> I?m running out of ideas. I?ve seen someone mention
> that you can replace $ZFSBOOT (cant remember the
> correct variable name atm.) with the full path of the
> usb stick in grub. 
Probably something like this:
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/xen/devdocs/install-depedencies/

  "-B zfs-bootfs=rpool/57, ...."

Problem is that the zfs id of the boot filesystem (57)
isn''t fixed, and changes when you create new 
boot environments.

And I think the id could change between different opensolaris
releases.


And I''m not sure how far your get with booting from the usb stick;
I suspect that your system has already mounted the zfs filesystem
root just fine, but gets into trouble due to these "unit attention"
"medium may have changed" events received from the usb stick.

Maybe you could try to boot in text mode from the usb stick
with options " -kv", and when the system is stuck with booting,
enter the kernel debugger by pressing "F1-a", and printing a
process tree listing with the kmdb ::ptree command?
If we get a process tree listing, that would be an indication
how far the kernel got with the boot process.
> Im going to try OS 2008.05, 2008.11 and the latest
> dev build of OS from genunix.org to see if any of
> thoose are able to create a proper installation. I?ve
> seen so much complaints around theese three build
> regarding USB drives that maybe it will work.
Do you have a non Kingston usb flash memory stick
(or e.g. a usb hard disk drive) that you could try instead?
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Does this give you anything?

[url=http://bildr.no/view/460193][img]http://bildr.no/thumb/460193.jpeg[/img][/url]
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> Does this give you anything?
> 
>
[url=http://bildr.no/view/460193][img]http://bildr.no/thumb/460193.jpeg[/img][/url]
That looks like the zfs mountroot panic you
get when the root disk was moved to a different
physical location (e.g. different usb port).
In this case the physical device path recorded
in the zpool on disk label cannot be used to
access the root disk.

Updating the physical device path works by
booting the livecd and "zpool import -f rpool".
zpool import will rewrite the on disk label with
the new physical device path, so that the next
boot from the device should work.

In theory, zfs is able to find the disk in any other 
physical location using the storage device''s "devid"
property. Unfortunately most usb sticks use the device 
type of "removable media disk" devices, and in this
case Solaris won''t generate "devids" for the usb 
stick.  And the result is that the root disk can''t be
found, when it was moved around and connected to
a different usb port.
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