On 08/17/2011 01:35 PM, Connie Sieh wrote:
> On Wed, 17 Aug 2011, Yasha Karant wrote:
>
>> I have to install SL 6.1 on a WD hard drive that uses a larger than 512
>> block.
>>
>> I plan to burn the bootable 4 Gbyte base SL 6.1 installation DVD from an
>> ISO image.
>>
>> 1. On a running 6.1 system that can see the unmounted raw target hard
>> drive (via eSATA -- but it appears to be a regular SATA drive so far as
>> the OS is concerned as /dev/sde ) and on which I have a DVD
>> reader/burner -- can I have anaconda from the DVD install the OS on the
>
> Please clarify "and on which I have a DVD reader/burner"
>
>> unmounted raw target?
>
> The installer does not care about mounted drives as they are not mounted
> when the installer runs.
>
>>
>> 2. If not, and I have multiple drives that I do not want touched, do I
>> simply boot the SL 6.1 bootable install DVD and then have anaconda,
>> etc., ignore all drives but the target one? If this is the case, how do
>> I do so?
>
> There is a option to disable drives but I would not trust it.
> DO NOT pick autopartitioning . Pick custom and choose wisely.
>
>>
>> 3. Must I force anaconda, etc., to use a larger block size on the
>> target disk that is a Western Digital Advanced Format Hard Drive or will
>> this happen automatically?
>
> What does TUV documentation have on this topic?
>
>>
>> Yasha Karant
>>
>
> -Connie Sieh
Connie,

My workstation is running SL 6.1 via the upgrade process from SL 6.0 
except for a kernel from a later release than that used by RHEL 6.1; 
this was necessary to fully support USB 3.

My workstation has a number of hard drives and peripherals:

two  harddrives with ext 2 bootable images of RHEL, one of which is SL 
6.1 (one of which is EIDE and the other is SATA, but each appears as 
/dev/sdX under SL 6 -- no more /dev/hdX )

one SATA harddrive with NTFS and a bootable image of MS Win XP Pro that 
is mounted under SL 6.1

a number of other devices, including a SATA DVD reader/burner

currently, a WD 1.5 Tbyte advanced format drive (with broken 512e 
emulation under the standard:  hard drives configured with 4096-byte 
physical sectors with 512-byte firmware are referred to as Advanced 
Format 512e, or 512 emulation drives, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format#Advanced_Format_512e ) that 
appears as /dev/sde but physically is done through eSATA -- but this 
drive appears as regular SATA hardware in the motherboard 
hardware/boot/configuration CMOS prior to booting SL.

On a running SL 6.1 system booted from /dev/sda, I would like to use the 
DVD reader that has a bootable DVD from 
SL-61-x86_64-2011-07-27-Install-DVD.iso to install, without shutting 
down the running SL 6.1 system, from the DVD onto the eSATA harddrive, 
all of which hardware is visible to SL 6.1 , as though I had booted from 
the DVD (anaconda, etc., running under the X11 gnome WM of the booted 
hard drive system if possible, not the DVD boot).

If this is not possible, then I will shutdown, reboot from the DVD, and 
only target for installation to the eSATA drive, unless that too is 
impossible.  However, the installation must use at least a 4096 byte 
physical sector (block), not a 512 byte.

Yasha Karant