RHEL GUI Build process.

Linux and Unix-Like Red Hat
1

Hi Folks,

I've recently upgraded (RHEL 6.5 to 7.5) a couple of servers and have noticed a peculiarity during the GUI build of the boxes.

This can be best explained as follows;

There were four Oracle ASM disks on each of these servers, these were selected in the GUI for reformat as XFS file systems as the extract fro the anaconda kick start file shows as follows;

[root@xxxxxxxxxxx ~]# cat anaconda-ks.cfg | grep ASM
part /ASM4 --fstype="xfs" --ondisk=sda --size=1023
part /ASM3 --fstype="xfs" --ondisk=sda --size=20479
part /ASM2 --fstype="xfs" --ondisk=sda --size=51199
part /ASM1 --fstype="xfs" --ondisk=sda --size=307200
[root@xxxxxxxxxxx~]#

All I did post build was to remove from the /etc/fstab file and unmount the directories.

However the Oracle team came back to me on both occasions and advised that they could still see the old ASM config on the disks.

It this point I ran;

  dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda3 bs=512 count=102400
  dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda6 bs=512 count=102400
  dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda7 bs=512 count=102400
  dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda8 bs=512 count=102400

My thinking being that this would over write anything that ASM could use and it worked on the first three but not the last one.

To correct that I ran;

mkfs.xfs /dev/sda8

All seemed to work!

Anyone have any thoughts?

Regards

Gull04

2

Could it be that the mount points on your root FS were populated with files so when you unmounted the disks the files under /ASM* in the root FS became visible.

3

Hi,

No, all the other slices of the disk were cleared and re-created. The upgrade process from RHEL 6.X to RHEL 7.X is destructive and is effectively a new installation - the rest of the disk entries from the kick start file are.

# Partition clearing information
clearpart --all --initlabel --drives=sda
# Disk partitioning information
part pv.17064 --fstype="lvmpv" --ondisk=sda --size=102403
part pv.15318 --fstype="lvmpv" --ondisk=sda --size=97284
part /ASM4 --fstype="xfs" --ondisk=sda --size=1023
part /ASM3 --fstype="xfs" --ondisk=sda --size=20479
part /ASM2 --fstype="xfs" --ondisk=sda --size=51199
part /boot --fstype="xfs" --ondisk=sda --size=511
part pv.43354 --fstype="lvmpv" --ondisk=sda --size=256003
part /boot/efi --fstype="efi" --ondisk=sda --size=511 --fsoptions="umask=0077,shortname=winnt"
part /ASM1 --fstype="xfs" --ondisk=sda --size=307200
volgroup applicvg --pesize=4096 pv.43354
volgroup rootvg --pesize=4096 pv.15318
volgroup backupvg --pesize=4096 pv.17064
logvol swap  --fstype="swap" --size=32768 --name=swap --vgname=rootvg
logvol /logs  --fstype="xfs" --size=10240 --name=logslv --vgname=applicvg
logvol /backups  --fstype="xfs" --size=10240 --name=backupslv --vgname=backupvg
logvol /jboss  --fstype="xfs" --size=102400 --name=jbosslv --vgname=applicvg
logvol /oracle12  --fstype="xfs" --size=102400 --name=oracle12lv --vgname=applicvg
logvol /backup  --fstype="xfs" --size=81920 --name=backuplv --vgname=backupvg
logvol /usr/local/patrol  --fstype="xfs" --size=5120 --name=patrollv --vgname=rootvg
logvol /usr/local/patrol/tmp  --fstype="xfs" --size=2047 --name=patroltmplv --vgname=rootvg
logvol /usr/local/bin/adsm  --fstype="xfs" --size=10240 --name=adsmlv --vgname=applicvg
logvol /etc/opt/yambay  --fstype="xfs" --size=5120 --name=etcoptyamlv --vgname=applicvg
logvol /opt/yambay  --fstype="xfs" --size=5120 --name=optyamlv --vgname=applicvg
logvol /  --fstype="xfs" --size=32768 --name=root --vgname=rootvg

I'm guessing that this is some kind of problem with the installer, where if you match an existing partition exactly the format fails - even if you select the format option.

Regards

Gull04