1 Topic by Val3r10

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Topic: GParted Live on HD & "toram" issue

Hello. I recently joined this forum because I got some problems with the hard-disk live version.
I did the same described here: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livehd.php
and everything works, BUT the "toram" option.

I tried both the live-0.3.9-13 stable and live-0.4.1-1 testing versions. Same problem.

It seems such cheatcode only works with the CDrom boot (/dev/hdc) and not with a hard disk installed kernel.

As a matter of facts, when starting from hd, everything works as expected, but I always got the /dev/hdaX partition locked, where the filesystem.squashfs resides.

Is it a bug I should report to bugzilla ?
Thanks for any answer

..._

2 Reply by stevenshiau

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Re: GParted Live on HD & "toram" issue

I can _not_ reproduce the problem here.
What's your grub config ? Please post it.

3 Reply by Val3r10

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Re: GParted Live on HD & "toram" issue

Thanks for your answer.

Here's the grub/menu.lst GParted section:

title        GParted Live v0.4.1
root        (hd0,2)
kernel        /boot/extras/vmlinuz-gparted boot=live live-media=/dev/hda8 live-media-path=gparted union=aufs noswap toram vga=788 ip=frommedia nolocales quiet highres=off nohz=off irqpoll
initrd        /boot/extras/initrd.gz-gparted

As you can see, I have my root/boot/grub partition as /dev/hda3 (hd0,2) in a multiboot environment, where I copied the kernel and the init-ramdisk (among other kernels)
Main compressed fs is in /dev/hda8/gparted/filesystem.squashfs

Everything works but the copy to ram, so I get locked both the hda4 and hda8 partitions (extended container and logical)

Thanks for any help

4 Reply by Val3r10 (edited by Val3r10 2008-12-15 22:52:45)

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Re: GParted Live on HD & "toram" issue

Besides, is it possible to set keyboard & locale in the grub cmdline, and bypass the interactive selection during bootup ?
I tried setting "locale=it" but in parameters.txt there isn't the exact syntax and I always get the menu questions

Thanks again

5 Reply by cmdr

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Re: GParted Live on HD & "toram" issue

Hello Val3r10,

Besides, is it possible to set keyboard & locale in the grub cmdline, and bypass the interactive selection during bootup ?

Yes, I just explained it here.

Regards
cmdr

6 Reply by Val3r10

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Re: GParted Live on HD & "toram" issue

cmdr wrote:

Hello Val3r10,
Yes, I just explained it here.

Thank you. Reported there my own experience  smile

Always referring to "live on hd" installation, a question more:
any way to set livefs_root to avoid "init:" error ?

big_smile

7 Reply by cmdr (edited by cmdr 2008-12-16 02:56:19)

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Re: GParted Live on HD & "toram" issue

Hello Val3r10,

your suggestion , concerning a perfect unattended start of "GParted" , works fine ! Thanks !!!

I just used my test to also add "toram" to the parameters ... and it worked without problems.

I booted version 0.3.9-13 from a 4GB USB key with 3 primary partitions on a machine with 3GB RAM .  I never tested it before, but this is a good method to get the whole USB key available for storing of snapshots or other things, because it can be mounted read/write afterwards. I noticed , that the whole volume , where "filesystem.squashfs" resides, gets copied into RAM (see "/live/image", 741 304k in my case). I don't know, how big your drive "hda8" is, but it seems, that it has to fit totally to RAM, unless "toram" is not executed... and of course "hda8" stays locked.

Regards
cmdr

PS: Wow, seems to be a very good co-work today !

Edit :

toram::

Adding this parameter, live-initramfs will try to copy the whole read-only media
to the computer's RAM before mounting the root filesystem. This could need a lot
of ram, according to the space used by the read-only media.

Source

8 Reply by Val3r10

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Re: GParted Live on HD & "toram" issue

Thanks for hints about locale.
Btw, I'm still having the described "toram" problem, with the gparted live partition always being locked (along with the extended partition which contains it)

Any further test ?

Thank you

9 Reply by cmdr

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Re: GParted Live on HD & "toram" issue

Hello Val3r10,

how big is "hda8" and how much real RAM do you have on your machine ?
It's logical that the extended partition gets locked, if one of its logical volumes is locked. Otherwise data loss would be certain on any "GParted" action !

Regards
cmdr

10 Reply by Val3r10

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Re: GParted Live on HD & "toram" issue

Of course I understand the extended partition being locked along with one of its logical.
That's why I would load the gparted kernel & stuff in ram...

I have 2gigs phisical RAM and the hda8 is about 800megs large
Are these infos useful ?

Thank you again

11 Reply by cmdr

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Re: GParted Live on HD & "toram" issue

Ok, whole volume fits to RAM, this should technically work! I had a closer look to Script "live", where the copy-action to RAM is done. The source really gets unmounted afterwards ! Perhaps the extended partition is the problem. I tested "toram" with a bootable multipartitioned USB key ( 3 primary partitions; "filesystem.squashfs" on the first) and it worked. Could you do a test on a small volume( < 2 GB ) on a  p r i m a r y partition of your harddisk ? What filesystem do you use on "hda8" ?

Merry Christmas in advance
cmdr

12 Reply by Val3r10

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Re: GParted Live on HD & "toram" issue

It actually seems a memory issue, indeed.
You're right.
I found a workaround creating a small 250mb dedicated partition (ext3, logical) to gparted live squashfs.
This way, it fits to RAM tmpfs created at boot-time, which seems factory sized to 200512k

Thanks for your tests, but it seems it isn't related to primary/extended issue.

Best whishes this evening

V.