Automatically prepare storage devices
setup-storage [-X]
[-f
filename]
[-d]
[-h]
[-s]
[-D
disks]
[-L
directory]
This section
describes
the
syntax
of
disk_config
files
file ::=
<lines>
EOF
lines ::=
EOL
comment ::=
#.*
config ::=
disk_config
lvm(
<lvmoption>)*
lvmoption ::=
/*
empty
*/
first time
*/
may be
the
device
(/dev/xxx),
a
label
given
using
-L,
raidoption ::=
/*
empty
*/
first time
*/
may be
the
device
(/dev/xxx),
a
label
given
using
-L,
or
the
uuid
cryptsetupoption ::=
/*
empty
*/
option ::=
/*
empty
*/
which may
not
necessarily
be
the
5th
line
of
the
configuration
*/
may be
the
device
(/dev/xxx),
a
label
given
using
-L,
or
the
uuid
important for
proper
performance
of
RAID
arrays
which
use
a
logical
volume ::=
<type>
<mountpoint>
<size>
<filesystem>
<mount_options>
<luks_options>
<fs_options>
type ::=
primary
recreated with
a
random
key
at
each
boot
and
reformatted as
ext2
*/
be recreated
with
a
random
key
at
each
boot
and
reformatted as
swap
space
*/
mountpoint {::=
(- | swap | /
[^
[:space:]]
*)}
name ::=
[^/
[:space:]]
+
sizespec {::=
RAM:
[[:digit:]]
+% | [[:digit:]]
+
[kKMGTP%iB]
*}
size {::=
<sizespec>(-(<sizespec>)?)?(:resize | :preserve_(always | reinstall | lazy))?}
tmpfs_size ::=
<sizespec>
mount_options ::=
[^
[:space:]]
+
filesystem ::=
-
luks_options ::=
(lukscreateopts=".*")
fs_options {::=
(createopts=".*" | tuneopts=".*" | (pv | vg | lv | md)createopts=".*")*}
Using FAI disk_config files, setup-storage Computes effective partition and volume sizes and executes the necessary commands to configure storage devices. It manages disk drives, RAID and LVM volumes, along with encryption and tmpfs. Disks and partitions are designated by disk1.2, disk3.1 etc. and may thus be referenced as such. Currently, setup-storage handles following filesystems: ext2/3/4, vFAT(FAT32), msdos(FAT16), reiserFS, XFS and BTRFS but could easily be extended to further types as well. Once the storage devices are prepared, an appropriate fstab(5) (and possibly also a crypttab(5) file is generated.
Without the -X parameter setup-storage runs in test-only mode and does not execute commands other than writing disk labels to a blank disk.
The exit code of setup-storage is 0 if all operations were performed successfully and non-zero if an error occurs.
-X
Really write the configuration to disk. Otherwise setup-storage runs in test-only mode.
-f filename
Normally setup-storage selects an appropriate configuration from $FAI/disk_config/ by picking the class with the highest priority from classes that has an existing file. If however -f is given the configuration in filename is used.
-d
Enable debugging output. Equivalent to environment variable debug set to a non-zero value. See below for further details.
-s
Perform syntax check of disk_config file only and exit.
-D disks
Specify the list of disk drives to be configured using setup-storage. Overrides the variable disklist. Do not forget to quote this space separated list.
-L directory
Use the specified directory instead of LOGDIR.
-h
Display the synopsis and version info and exit.
-p
Print the commands that would be executed, then exit.
-y
Print disk variables as YAML file into disk_var.yml
setup-storage will use the following environment variables:
disklist
If option -D is not used, the disklist variable may contain a space separated list of disk drives available in the system. Their order matters as they may be referred to as disk1, and so on, in disk_config. If unset, fai-disk-info will be called to determine the list.
debug
If debug is set to a non-zero value all actions and details to track the operation of setup-storage are printed to stderr.
FAI
The location of the config space to find the disk_config directory.
classes
The list of FAI classes to determine the appropriate configuration to choose.
LOGDIR
setup-storage generates disk_var.sh, fstab, and possibly crypttab (see below) in this directory. Defaults to /tmp/fai if unset. Option -L overrides this.
flag_initial
This variable determines if partitions should be preserved when they are tagged with preserve_reinstall (see below for details). Normally set by the list of FAI flags (FAI_FLAGS).
SS_IGNORE_VG
This variable may contain a list of volume groups, that are ignored by setup-storage. The list can be comma or space separated. It's used by fai-diskimage. FAI_KEEP_CRYPTKEYFILE If this variable is set, the keyfiles for disks encryption are not deleted and will be saved into the local and remote locations of the log files.
If setup-storage executes successfully, an fstab(5) file matching the specified configuration is generated as $LOGDIR/fstab. Furthermore the file $LOGDIR/disk_var.sh is generated. This file defines the following variables, if not yet set: SWAPLIST, ROOT_PARTITION, BOOT_PARTITION (which is only set in case this resides on a disk drive), BOOT_DEVICE and PHYSICAL_BOOT_DEVICES (which contains the list of all physical devices having a bootable partition). Both BOOT_PARTITION and BOOT_DEVICE describe the partition and disk/RAID/LVM device hosting the mount point for /boot. If /boot has no extra mount point, / is used instead. PHYSICAL_BOOT_DEVICES can be used to determine where a bootloader should be installed (this is useful if / is on a LVM or RAID device). You may source $LOGDIR/disk_var.sh to get the variables set. The example config space shipped with FAI sources this file in scripts/GRUB_PC/10-setup. If encryption was configured, a proper crypttab(5) file plus key files will be generated.
The output of setup-storage is also written to the log file format.log.
setup-storage configures storage devices according to a FAI disk_config file. The full grammar describing the syntax of these disk_config files is given below. The syntax is similar to the structure of an fstab file. First we show a number of examples to give an intuition what these should look like.
disk_config disk1 disklabel:msdos bootable:3 primary /boot 20-100 ext4 rw primary swap 1G swap sw primary / 12G ext4 rw,noatime logical /backup 10%- xfs rw
The first disk found is going to be partitioned. FAI looks into /proc/partitions and sets the variable disklist. The disklabel is msdos which is the default for x86. Let's assume /dev/sda is the first disk. Then partition /dev/sda3 is made bootable.
Create a primary partition /dev/sda1 with a size between 20 and 100 MiB and mount it read-write as /boot; it is formatted using ext4 filesystem.
/dev/sda2 will be a swap space of 1 GiB
/dev/sda3 should be formatted using ext4 filesystem
Create the logical partition /dev/sda5 (because the first logical partition will always become number 5) Make it at least 10% of the disk size. Use mkfs.xfs to format this partition.
disk_config sda primary - 20G - - primary - 4G - - disk_config sdb sameas: sda disk_config raid raid1 / sda1,sdb1 ext4 rw raid1 swap sda2,sdb2 swap sw
Create 2 partitions of size 20 and 4 GiB, respectively, on disks /dev/sda and /dev/sdb. No file system or fstab entry will be created. on these partitions.
Create a RAID-1 on /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1, format using mkfs.ext4 and mount it as /
Create a RAID-1 on /dev/sda2 and /dev/sdd2, prepare as swap space and use it as such later on.
disk_config raid raid1 / sda1,sdd1 ext4 rw,errors=remount-ro raid0 - disk2.2,sdc1,sde1:spare:missing ext4 default
Create a RAID-1 on /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdd1, format using mkfs.ext2 and mount it as /
Create a RAID-0 on the second partition of the second disk, /dev/sdc1, and /dev/sde1 as a spare partition. The latter may be missing.
The configurations for /dev/sda, /dev/sdd, disk2, /dev/sdc, and /dev/sde are omitted in this example. These devices can be configured similar to the configuration shown in the first example. They may also already be properly set up and hence the configuration can be left out.
disk_config sda bootable:1 primary /boot 500 ext4 rw primary - 4096- - - disk_config lvm vg my_pv sda2 my_pv_swap swap 2048 swap sw my_pv_root / 2048 ext4 rw
Configure /dev/sda with two partitions.
The second of those, /dev/sda2, is then used in the LVM volume group my_pv.
This volume group hosts two logical volumes: _swap and _root.
disk_config disk1 disklabel:msdos fstabkey:uuid primary - 350 - - primary swap 2G swap sw,pri=1 primary - 0- - - disk_config disk2 sameas:disk1 disk_config raid fstabkey:uuid raid1 /boot disk1.1,disk2.1 ext4 rw,noatime,errors=remount-ro raid1 - disk1.3,disk2.3 - - disk_config lvm fstabkey:uuid vg vg_system md1 vg_system-root / 4G-50G ext4 rw,noatime vg_system-home /home 1G- ext4 rw,noatime,nosuid,nodev
Configure the first and second disk identical with three partitions each.
The first partitions of each device are bundled into a RAID 1 (/dev/md0), which will be mounted at /boot.
The third partition of each device are combined as another RAID 1, but not mounted. Instead, the resulting device /dev/md1 is used to host the LVM volume group vg_system.
ATTENTION! Do not forget to install the packages mdadm and lvm2 into a system using this partition scheme. Also set rd.auto when using dracut as initrd generator.
disk_config /dev/sdb primary / 21750 ext4 defaults,errors=remount-ro primary /boot 250 ext4 defaults logical - 4000 - - logical - 2000 - - logical - 10- - - disk_config cryptsetup swap swap /dev/sdb5 swap defaults tmp /tmp /dev/sdb6 ext2 defaults luks /local00 /dev/sdb7 ext4 defaults,errors=remount-ro createopts="-m 0"
Configure /dev/sdb with 2 primary partitions, one extended partition, and 3 logical partitions.
Encrypt the swap space, /tmp, and /local00. As described in the CAVEATS section, the encryption keys will be stored in a temporary directory only.
Do not forget to install the cryptsetup package on a system using thus scheme.
The initial password for the encrypted device can also be set in the configuration file by using the syntax - luks:"secret"
With a working RAID+LVM configuration, an encryption layer can be added between the RAID and LVM device layers by adding the following cryptsetup configuration. In this case, the encrypted device will be called 'crypt_format_md1' and will be used as the underlying physical device (PV) in LVM.
disk_config cryptsetup luks - /dev/md1 - -
disk_config disk1 disklabel:gpt bootable:1 fstabkey:uuid align-at:1M primary - 100% - - disk_config cryptsetup luks:"passwd" - disk1.1 - - disk_config lvm fstabkey:uuid vg vg1 disk1.1 vg1-root / 30%- ext4 defaults,errors=remount-ro,noatime,rw
disk_config tmpfs tmpfs /tmp RAM:20% defaults tmpfs /scratch 3GiB defaults tmpfs /scratch2 - defaults
Mount a tmpfs on /tmp with a maximum size equal to 20% of the total amount of RAM in the machine. This is equivalent to using size=20% in the tmpfs mount options.
Mount a tmpfs on /scratch with a maximum size of 3 GiB.
Mount a tmpfs on /scratch2, use the system default size for this tmpfs.
disk_config nfs nfs 11.22.33.44:/export/vm-root/HOSTNAME / defaults
A diskless client setup. Mount the whole OS file system via NFS from an NFS server onto /.
disk_config disk1 primary /boot 500 ext4 rw primary - 2G- - - disk_config disk2 primary - 2G- - - disk_config disk3 sameas:disk2 disk_config disk4 sameas:disk2 disk_config btrfs fstabkey:uuid btrfs raid1 / disk1.2,disk2.1 noatime,subvol=@/ btrfs raid1 /home disk3.1,disk4.1 subvol=@home,noatime
Four disks are used to create a BTRFS RAID. The first disk contains the boot partition, the second partition of disk one and the second disk in its entirety are used to create the / RAID. The third and fourth disks are used to create the /home RAID.
Note that each BTRFS RAID must contain an initial subvolume. This is necessary to use advanced BTRFS features such as snapshots. The initial subvolume name is taken from the subvol mountoption. In the above example those would be @/ and @home.
Subvolume names begin with an @ by convention.
Every BTRFS line must begin with btrfs followed by the RAID-level of the actual data -- NOT metadata! By default metadata uses RAID1, however this can be changed using createopts.
disk_config /dev/sda fstabkey:uuid bootable:2 primary / 20GiB ext3 defaults primary /boot 250 ext2 defaults primary swap 4GiB swap defaults logical - 256 ext3_journal - logical - 256 ext4_journal - logical - 256 xfs_journal - disk_config /dev/sdb fstabkey:uuid primary /mnt/ext3 33% ext3:journal=/dev/sda5 defaults primary /mnt/ext4 33% ext4:journal=/dev/sda6 defaults primary /mnt/xfs 33% xfs:journal=/dev/sda7 defaults
Mount an ext3 filesystem on /dev/sdb1 with an external journal on /dev/sda5
Mount an ext4 filesystem on /dev/sdb2 with an external journal on /dev/sda6
Mount an XFS filesystem on /dev/sdb3 using /dev/sda7 as the log device
disk_config disk1 disklabel:gpt fstabkey:partlabel bootable:1 p=efi /boot/efi 200 vfat rw p=root / 1G-20G ext4 rw p= /data 1G- ext4 rw
Creating a ESP partition for UEFI boot is very simple. Use a GPT partition table, create a vfat partition for /boot/efi which is also bootable. That's it. A name after p= is used as the partition label. Remember that GPT does not use logical partition. Just use p= for each partition. The fstab entries will use the partition labels if defined. Otherwise it will fall back to the file system UUID or the device name. Setting fstabkey:partuuid will use the UUID of the partition (not the UUID of the file system) for the fstab entries.
If you use software RAID or LVM in your disk config, do not forget also to add the required packages (like mdadm and lvm2) to the package config. Otherwise the client will not be able to use these features.
MD devices aka software RAID will not be synced during a new installation because it would slow down the installation heavily. Therefore setup-storage will set the sync_action of each device to frozen. The sync will start after the next reboot.
Machine does not boot because no partition is marked as bootable: If the bootable option is not specified, not partition will be marked as such. Modern BIOSes don't seem to require such markers anymore, but for some systems it may still be necessary. Previous versions of setup-storage by default marked the partition mounting / as bootable, but this is not a sane default for all cases. If you want to be sure not boot failures happen because of a missing bootable marker, explicitly set the bootable option. Of course, there are lots of other reasons why a system may fail to boot.
Crypto support requires some site-specific changes: If you use cryptsetup stanza, a crypttab(5) file and key files for all luks volumes will be created (unless you used the passphrase option). The key files are left in /tmp/fai; you will want to copy these to some removable media. To make encrypted root devices actually usable, you need to add busybox (and initramfs-tools) to your package config.
For backwards compatibility or other system-specific reasons an alignment to cylinder boundaries may be necessary. Other systems might have other alignment constraints. setup-storage sets the alignment as follows: If align-at is set, align accordingly. Otherwise, if any partition on the particular disk is to be preserved, default to cylinder alignment, otherwise use sector alignment.
If you use a raw partition, you should add -F to the createopts, otherwise mkfs.ext4 hangs due to a warning message. See man mfs.ext4 for more info on -F. An example config using a raw disk looks like this: raw-disk / 4GB ext4 rw createopts="-F"
9 releases since Debian 5.0 (Lenny); the text changed 8 times.
-D since Debian 7 (Wheezy);
-L since Debian 7 (Wheezy);
-p since Debian 13 (Trixie);
-s since Debian 7 (Wheezy);
-y since Debian 10 (Buster).