Bugzilla – Bug 7544
12Gb minimum disk requirement is too restrictive
Last modified: 2009-10-25 03:30:49 UTC
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It was discovered during testing the fix for bug 6850 that AI installs enforce a minimum of 12GB disk storage: <equach> <AI Mar 19 17:50:03> Checking any disks for minimum recommended size of 12646 MB <equach> <AI Mar 19 17:50:03> Disk c1t0d0 size listed as 8192 MB <equach> <AI Mar 19 17:50:03> Cannot find a disk using default search. Specify a disk name or other search criteria in the manifest. This is a problem in virtualized scenarios, where 12Gb is actually rather larger than usual (a typical virtual disk image would be 4Gb, but much lower values are sometimes used). It also seems a little heavyweight for USB, though perhaps that case isn't relevant. Furthermore, it doesn't seem useful behaviour to have this restriction in place. If I supply a disk, it should just use that (giving a clear warning) unless it's literally unworkable (the image will not fit into the provided space). This is particularly important for things like virtual appliances which need to be as small as possible.
I believe that this restriction only applies in the case when target disk is not specified in AI manifest. Then AI tries to find one which has at least recommended size for the installation. Recommended size takes into account: * bits to be installed * further system upgrades * swap and dump on ZFS volumes If target disk is explicitly specified in AI manifest, this check is not carried out. It is assumed that since user expressed intent to install on particular disk, s/he is aware of how much space is available for the installation and what limitations might be taken into account (e.g. no swap or dump created due to the lack of space). Could you please retry with AI manifest specifying target disk, e.g.: ... <ai_manifest name="default"> <ai_target_device> <target_device_name> c4d0 </target_device_name> </ai_target_device> ... </ai_manifest>
I don't agree that the user should have to specify a target disk in this case, and my previous comments still apply IMHO.
John, I agree that 'default' doesn't satisfy the scenario you described. I think the question is what scenarios should be covered when default AI manifest is taken into account and how 'default' should behave in those cases. Originally, the intent here was to address common scenarios. On the other hand, it was necessary to make sure that default behavior is self defensive in such a way that it can't lead to unusable installation - in this case caused by sufficient space. Actually (as you pointed out) even more strong criteria was selected, so that default always produces the same result with respect to the points mentioned in comment #1 which was crucial from testing and evaluating point of view in times when AI prototype was introduced. That said, this decision is not set in stone and of course might require to be revisited when another scenarios come to action (e.g virtual appliances). If you think the default behavior should be changed, please feel free to start discussion about this on caiman-discuss mailing list.
John, Dave, thank you for the useful input - capturing outcome from the discussion happened on caiman-discuss mailing list: It is recommended to change default behavior in following way: * search for first disk with at least 'recommended' space available (taking into account further upgrades and swap and dump devices). * If such disk is not found, pick up the first one with at least minimum space available (size of bits to be installed plus some reserve - 20% for now is used). * if there is no disk with at least minimum required space available, inform user and give up. With respect to the 20% reserve - it now takes into account space needed for pkg(5) download cache located in /var/pkg/download/ directory. It was observed that after babel_install cluster is installed, cache occupies ~1GB disk space.
I also hits this when I try this on linei-u5 which only had a 8 GB disk and I cannot install, this is the failure: Automated Installation failed Please refer to /tmp/install_log file for details Jun 23 18:18:56 opensolaris svc.startd[7]: application/auto-installer:default failed fatally: transitioned to maintenance (see 'svcs -xv' for details) Checking any disks for minimum recommended size of 12646 MB Disk c6t0d0 size listed as 8223 MB Cannot find a disk using default search. Specify a disk name or other search criteria in the manifest. Target validation failed ai target device not found Unhandled exception in thread started by Error in sys.excepthook: Original exception was: Auto install failed Automated Installation failed Please refer to /tmp/install_log file for details [ Jun 23 18:18:56 Method "start" exited with status 95. ] Jun 23 18:18:58 opensolaris sendmail[302]: unable to qualify my own domain name (localhost) -- using short name Jun 23 18:18:58 opensolaris sendmail[302]: [ID 702911 mail.alert] unable to qualify my own domain name (localhost) -- using short name ^C root@opensolaris:/var/svc/log#
Any progress? This is a significant inhibitor for virtualization+AI.
Upgraded the importance.