ndt-users list created

[Jason Zurawski <>]

Hi Chris;

Thanks for this information.  I am going to cross post to the 
performance-node-users list.  Also note that the next release of the pS 
Performance Toolkit (3.2) will have a method to install to a hard drive. 
 Expected release is late July of 2010.

Thanks;

-jason

On 6/9/10 10:28 AM, Chris Hawkinson wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I looked for a How-to to install the pS-Performance toolkit image to a
> hard drive, but none were forthcoming... so... here's what I did, which,
> hopefully, will be useful to the community as well;
>
> Hardware: SGI/Rackable Systems dual Xeon 1U server. 2x146G SAS HDs. 4GB
> RAM. 2x1GEnet. 1x10GEnet (Intel). Using an external USB CD drive.
>
> Goal: Setup a RAID 1 mirrored performance test point based on the
> pS-Performance Toolkit v3.1.3 distribution.
>
> Steps I followed to get this up and running...
>
> 1) Booted the system with the pS-Performance Toolkit v3.1.3 CD
>
> 2) Logged in as knoppix and then 'sudo -i'
>
> 3) Run 'fdisk /dev/sda' and configured 2 partitions ...
> a) primary part #1 - 142GB primary partition with a type of Linux (0x83)
> b) primary part #2 - 4GB primary partition 2 with a type of Linux Swap
> (0x82)
>
> *** if you are not setting up an MD RAID 1, skip to step 6, below
>
> 4) Run 'fdisk /dev/sdb' and setup the exact same partition map on the
> 2nd drive
>
> 5) Setup an md raid 1 mirror...
> a) 'modprobe raid1'
> b) 'mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1'
> c) wait for the mirror to finish initializing (it'll print a message to
> the console when finished, or 'cat /proc/mdstat')
>
> 6) Run 'knoppix-installer'
> i) Configure options
> a) select a type of 'Debian'
> b) selected /dev/md0 as the installation partition (if you are using a
> single disk, choose /dev/sda1 instead)
> c) selected ext3 as the file system type
> d) Entered knoppix as the "whole name", and also as the "user name"
> e) entered suitable passwords for knoppix and administrator
> f) entered a hostname for my system
> g) selected MBR as the boot-loader option
> ii) Select Start Installation and let it finish
>
> 7) I did see several setup warnings related to init.d which didn't seem
> to have an effect on the installation
>
> 8) Answered NO when asked to insert a floppy, which isn't required for
> this type of install
>
> 9) Setup completed and put me back to the root prompt.
>
> 10) For my RAID configuration, I also installed Grub to the 2nd HD, as
> follows...
> i) Run 'grub'
> grub> device (hd0) /dev/sdb
> grub> root (hd0,0)
> grub> setup (hd0)
> grub> quit
>
> 11) Removed the CD, and rebooted the system.
>
> 12) On 1st reboot, fsck will do a filesystem check on the boot hard
> drive (/dev/md0 in my case)
>
> 13) Logged in as root (using the password I set for the administrator
> account)
>
> 14) Ran 'visudo' and uncommented the knoppix user line. Saved the file.
>
> 15) Setup a RAID 1 for SWAP ...
> a) 'mdadm --create /dev/md1 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2'
> b) wait for the mirror to finish initializing (it'll print a message to
> the console when finished, or 'cat /proc/mdstat')
>
> 16) Configure swap with 'mkswap /dev/md1'
>
> 17) Enable swap with 'swapon /dev/md1'
>
> 18) Edit /etc/fstab and add the line '/dev/md1 none swap sw 0 0'
>
> 19) If using RAID, remove the last 4 lines in fstab which are
> automatically added by the installer (these all have comments line '#
> ADDED BY KNOPPIX')
>
> 20) If using RAID, edit /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf and change the DEVICE line
> to read 'DEVICE /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2'
>
> 21) If using RAID, edit /etc/init.d/knoppix-autoconfig, search for
>
> 21) REBOOT. After reboot use 'swapon -s' to verify the RAID 1 swap
> partition is being used.
>
> 22) Ran 'sudo np-toolkit-configure.py' and selected /dev/md0 as the
> Storage device ... did rest of the Toolkit setup as usual.
>
> ... Seems to works for me! ...
>
> Chris
>
> Chris Hawkinson
> Network Performance Engineer
> CENIC