On 07/28/2011 04:29 PM, Alexander Hunt wrote:
> On 07/28/2011 08:09 AM, Yasha Karant wrote:
>> On 07/28/2011 02:21 AM, Alexander Hunt wrote:
>>> On 07/28/2011 12:48 AM, Yasha Karant wrote:
>>>> On 07/27/2011 11:23 PM, Steven J. Yellin wrote:
>>>>> On Wed, 27 Jul 2011, Yasha Karant wrote:
>>>>>> ...
>>>>>> Is it safe to do the merry chase down the dependency trail to port a
>>>>>> later parted to SL 6 or will some of these cause SL 6 to fail/become
>>>>>> unstable? Does anyone have a SL 6 port of either parted or gparted
>>>>>> that is more recent than the stock SL 6 versions?
>>>>>>
>>>>> You asked about SL6, but my experience with SL5 may be relevant. The
>>>>> stock SL5 parted wouldn't make a label on a 3TB WD USB drive (4096
>>>>> byte
>>>>> sectors), so I compiled what was then the latest version, parted-2.4,
>>>>> from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/parted/. There were no absent dependencies,
>>>>> installation put the result into /usr/local/sbin, leaving the stock
>>>>> version alone, and the compiled version was adequate. They're up to
>>>>> parted-3.0 now.
>>>>>
>>>>> Steven Yellin
>>>>
>>>> I tried your suggested approach first but did not mention this in my
>>>> posting. Below is the failure from configure of parted-3.0 on SL 6 :
>>>>
>>>> checking for uuid_generate in -luuid... no
>>>> configure: error: GNU Parted requires libuuid - a part of the
>>>> util-linux-ng package (but
>>>> usually distributed separately in libuuid-devel, uuid-dev or similar)
>>>> This can probably be found on your distribution's CD or FTP site or at:
>>>> http://userweb.kernel.org/~kzak/util-linux-ng/
>>>> Note: originally, libuuid was part of the e2fsprogs package. Later, it
>>>> moved to util-linux-ng-2.16, and that package is now the preferred
>>>> source.
>>>>
>>>> End output.
>>>>
>>>> I was going to start chasing down the above dependencies, but instead
>>>> attempted the Fedora path -- and again faced a chase as I previously
>>>> have noted. If I install / build the various parts that parted-3.0
>>>> requires, will I break SL 6? One option is to build (configure, make)
>>>> all of the parts without make install and customize the configure/make
>>>> paths in each component to find the parts in non-standard locations so
>>>> as not to "clobber" the stock SL 6 components.
>>>>
>>>> Does anyone have a parted-3.0 ported to SL 6?
>>>>
>>>> Yasha Karant
>>> Have you considered using a live CD of one of the fedora versions (I
>>> prefer F13 for that, but maybe it would have a problem with those drives
>>> too, so perhaps F14 or 15) to do the partitioning and then do the SL
>>> install? I've had to use that method in the past with Seagate drives.
>>> Just a thought to keep you out of dep hell.
>>> There is also the new parted magic live CD that may be better than
>>> Fedora because the tools are already in the distro.
>>> http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=partedmagic
>>>
>> Thank you for the suggestion. I actually had, but for the moment, have
>> rejected the idea. I shall explain my reasoning and please correct it.
>>
>> My machine does not have eSATA -- although I may have to get an eSATAp
>> card that does not have a controller but merely connects to an
>> available SATA data cable and then the necessary cable to attach any
>> of the various form factors of SATA drives (the docking station I have
>> will accept either a desktop workstation or a laptop form factor SATA
>> drive). The motherboard on my workstation has ample free SATA ports
>> and a large enough power supply (1.5 kW) to supply an eSATAp without
>> issue.
>>
>> Without eSATA, and given the difficulties that I have encountered with
>> USB 3 support in stock SL 6 (USB 2 is prohibitively slow to clone a
>> drive in the TByte capacity range), would one of these live CDs allow
>> ("see") an external USB 3 drive as /dev/sdX (or /dev/hdX or ... ) for
>> some X? With eSATA, this should not be an issue.
>>
>> Details:
>>
>> I am using my faculty workstation for now to clone hard drives in that
>> we do not have a dedicated cloning facility. Unfortunately, the drive
>> from which I am cloning is a standard 512 byte sector drive, whereas
>> the drive that is the target is one of the WD Advanced Format units,
>> and thus a regular dd operation -- even with different input and
>> output block sizes -- would not work because the input file system
>> format would have partitions and internal file pointer contents (in an
>> inode, for example) that would not point to the correct locations on a
>> drive with very different internal block boundaries. If the sector
>> sizes are the same on two disks, and other compatibility issues are
>> met, and because the internal firmware on modern drives and
>> controllers handles typical bad block issues, if one has two devices
>> (say /dev/sdX and /dev/sdY, X .NE. Y), then a simple dd from sdX to
>> sdY should copy all of the relevant partition and file system
>> information, allowing one to
>> mount the various top level directories of the cloned drive and make
>> any necessary changes (such as the IP address for the target machine
>> if, e. g., DHCP is not in use). Given the data rate of USB 3 and the
>> existence of USB 3 SATA drive docking stations (e.g., an external USB
>> 3 drive enclosure without the need of mechanically opening and closing
>> an enclosure to insert or remove a drive), my plan was to use dd over
>> USB 3.
>>
>> Yasha Karant
>
> <snip>
> Without eSATA, and given the difficulties that I have encountered with
> USB 3 support in stock SL 6 (USB 2 is prohibitively slow to clone a
> drive in the TByte capacity range), would one of these live CDs allow
> ("see") an external USB 3 drive as /dev/sdX (or /dev/hdX or ... ) for
> some X? With eSATA, this should not be an issue.
> <end-snip>
>
> I'm not sure, I don't have a USB3 drive to test that, so I think what I
> would do is to run the F15 live CD on one of the new computers you got
> and test that there.
> Also if the drive will come out of your USB3 unit, I'd take it out and
> connect straight to the applicable port on the mobo or expansion card ,
> this would avoid the USB3 issue all together.
>
> <snip>
> if one has two devices (say /dev/sdX and /dev/sdY, X .NE. Y), then a
> simple dd from sdX to sdY should copy all of the relevant partition and
> file system information, allowing one to mount the various top level
> directories of the cloned drive and make any necessary changes
> <end snip>
>
> I agree with this and it gave me another thought. I think for myself, it
> would be faster and easier to avoid complications, and use a live CD to
> do your partition and formatting on the new WD drive on one of the new
> machines, do your SL6 install on that one, do all the other setup and
> install all the software the machines need.
> Then clone all the drives for the remainder of the computers (in SL6 and
> on the new machine) and then do a data transfer if there is any that
> needs to be on each of them. You'll have to be the judge of whether the
> pro and cons of this method are worth it.
> I will look into other cloning methods for you when I get back from dinner.
> Best regards
>
>
After some consideration of the issues, and in particular the reality
that the WD drives need to have an application run in MS DOS (or a clone
thereof) to modify the WD firmware so that the drive does not fail after
a relatively short time, we are not going to use the WD drives as
primary drives at this time without further evaluation. Given our
budget, we have selected a competitor's 1.5 Tbyte SATA drive with 7200
RPM and standard 512 byte sectors -- we only need 3 of these so the
cloning and cost is not excessive. (HITACHI Deskstar 7K3000
HDS723015BLA642 (0F12114) 1.5TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard
Drive -Bare Drive -- we could not afford the cost of the Hitachi
enterprise drive.)
I have arranged to get the following two components:
APEVIA 15" 2 x SATA to eSATA x 2 Ports w/ Bracket Model eSATA15DP
Thermaltake BlacX Duet 2.5" & 3.5" Black USB2.0 & eSATA Dual Hard Drives
Docking
Station
Unfortunately, the Thermaltake USB 3.0 version of the above that I
currently have does not have eSATA, only USB.
Because eSATA appears during boot as an actual internal hard drive but
USB 3 may or may not, I will boot my workstation from the SL 6.1 install
DVD with the target to be one drive in the eSATA docking station. I
will do a clean partitioning and fresh install of SL 6.1 . I will then
boot the clean install SL 6.1 system on the eSATA connected drive;
assuming that it boots normally, I will reboot to the internal
workstation drive, and make whatever changes I need to make to the eSATA
drive (network, later kernel, additional applications such as UCSF
Chimera, etc.).
I will then place a bare drive in the other slot of the docking station
(bare but low level format), and using dd, clone from the external SL
6.1 eSATA drive to the bare one. Given that the two drives are
identical (same model), the cloning by dd should work.
I will report the results to this list.
Also, I have built parted 3.0 on SL 6.1 (I have upgraded my workstation
to 6.1 now that it has gone to production status). Does anyone have a
current gparted or other GUI based partitioning utility that supports
the features of parted 3 on SL 6.x x86-64?
Yasha Karant
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