| TheProf | Hello. I hope you are all very well. I am trying to install Ubuntu-mate on a PowerEdge T320 which has a Perc H310 raid controller for 8 drives. If I create the RAID in the BIOS and then boot to install, Ubuntu-mate does not see the virtual drive. If I eliminate the RAID completely, Ubuntu-mate boots into installation, but will not give any option to create a RAID via software. Could you please advise | 02:14 |
|---|---|---|
| TheProf | how I can install Ubuntu-mate with RAID - either software or hardware please? Thank you. | 02:14 |
| tomreyn | TheProf: you're aware that PowerEdge T320 is (very old) server hardware and Ubuntu Mate is a desktop OS? have you installed a separate graphics card there? | 02:36 |
| TheProf | @tomreyn, hello. Thanks for replying. Yes - the server was donated to us and is sufficiently-powered for our small school. We are running LTSP which requires the server to have the same platform as that which will end up on the clients. The server will rarely be logged into, so the graphical card it has onboard will be sufficient. | 02:38 |
| TheProf | The students will all log into the computer stations which PXE boot off this server and receive the Ubuntu-mate image to boot off | 02:38 |
| TheProf | Until very recently we were running a Proliant DL360 G5 which is ancient but worked very well until a motherboard component failed. So the T320 is an upgrade :) | 02:40 |
| tomreyn | alright, i see. i'm not sure whether this really requires you to run a GUI on the server, but if that's so, or what you want, then, sure, you could, if slowly. | 02:40 |
| tomreyn | congrats on the upgrade then :) | 02:41 |
| TheProf | The way the Linux Terminal Server Project works is that you set up the server the way you want the clients to be, then it squashes it down into an image and servers it via PXE. It works amazingly well. | 02:42 |
| tomreyn | i've lost track of what these old LSI controllers can and can't do, i think they are more the entry level cards, but i don't even remember whether they have a battery backup unit | 02:42 |
| TheProf | I've put it on a UPS for that reason. | 02:42 |
| tomreyn | i see | 02:43 |
| TheProf | I don't mind using Linux raid but I don't see it during installation | 02:43 |
| superkuh | I suppose you go into a ubuntu mate live CD environment and set up / load the drivers for your RAID and install from there? | 02:43 |
| tomreyn | i guess i'd prefer to use this controller as a dumb sata/sas controller and use software raid | 02:44 |
| TheProf | @superkuh, I didn't know that is an option. I'm a non-tech person who had to learn all this for the school. | 02:44 |
| TheProf | @tomreyn, sure. How do I get the installer to set up software RAID? | 02:45 |
| tomreyn | i don't actually know the ubuntu mate installer - it's possible that it does not support raid configurations. you would likely need to install ubuntu server first, then the mate specific meta package | 02:45 |
| superkuh | Don't take my word for it. I have never used raid in my life. | 02:45 |
| TheProf | @superkuh, no problem :) | 02:46 |
| TheProf | @tomreyn, OK. I did see that Ubuntu server has RAID in the installation process but then the students would get the server when the log in. So you're saying you can convert it to Ubuntu mate? | 02:47 |
| superkuh | I'm imagining it's probably in the kernel already but not auto-loaded and you have to load the kernel module yourself or something. | 02:47 |
| TheProf | Will the conversion cause incompatibilities when updating / upgrading? | 02:47 |
| tomreyn | TheProf: if you start with ubuntu server, and 'remodel' that into ubuntu mate, i think it will be considered an ubuntu mate installation during upgrades. | 02:50 |
| tomreyn | i.e. it would become a mate installation, but you may need to work out a bit which extra packages the server installer installed that you don't actually need and make sure you have all the packages installed that the mate installer would have installed. | 02:50 |
| TheProf | OK. That makes sense. Is there a list of the relevant meta-packages needed for Ubuntu-mate? | 02:52 |
| tomreyn | https://packages.ubuntu.com/noble/ubuntu-mate-core seems to be the main package you would need to install, it should pull in most dependencies | 02:52 |
| TheProf | I can probably do a bare-bone installation of the server and build up from there. | 02:52 |
| tomreyn | but i can't really tell how this would play out for the ltsp clients, just because i don't know how those pxe images are built | 02:53 |
| tomreyn | but what you described sounds like this process should get you what you want | 02:54 |
| TheProf | tomreyn, the LTSP side is fairly straightforward. It has a series of commands which build the image based on the existing OS setup and there is an exclusion list where you list what not to include. So I would list the server components and they would be ignored. | 02:55 |
| tomreyn | well you could actually remove the server components after installation | 02:56 |
| tomreyn | so it'd be sudo apt update && sudo apt install ubuntu-mate-desktop ubuntu-mate-core buntu_server_ ubuntu-server-minimal_ after you installed ubuntu server | 02:59 |
| TheProf | Yes that would work as well. I also end up excluding several other things, so the image ends up being much smaller | 02:59 |
| TheProf | Thank you for that command | 03:00 |
| tomreyn | ( ubuntu-mate-desktop should be the proper package, not just ubuntu-mate-core) | 03:00 |
| TheProf | OK so both | 03:00 |
| TheProf | got it. | 03:00 |
| tomreyn | ubuntu-mate-desktop depends on ubuntu-mate-core and additional packages | 03:01 |
| tomreyn | one important point is that desktops usually use network-manager while the server install uses (systemd-)networkd for managing network configurations and interfaces | 03:03 |
| tomreyn | but IIRC the server installer lets you shoose which one you want. if that's not so, you may want to add network-manager after installation, because it works better with desktops | 03:03 |
| tomreyn | (there are GUIs for managing the network configuration with network manager but not systemd-networkd) | 03:04 |
| TheProf | Hopefully this works. Ubuntu Mate is the distro LTSP recommends and I've been using it since at least 16.04 (that was the installation that crashed recently) so I much prefer it as opposed to switching to another one. It's the RAID that was the bottleneck. It worked on the Proliant but not the PowerEdge. | 03:05 |
| TheProf | I think LTSP switches the network interface to systemd | 03:05 |
| tomreyn | it's fine to have both installed side by side | 03:07 |
| tomreyn | it's just that each interface needs to be managed by one or the other | 03:08 |
| TheProf | Great | 03:08 |
| tomreyn | you can use networkctl to manage systemd-networkd interfaces, nmcli to manage network-manager interfaces | 03:08 |
| tomreyn | those are the CLI's | 03:09 |
| tomreyn | server actually uses a separate tool, netplan, to create configurations suitable for systemd-networkd (default) or network-manager | 03:09 |
| TheProf | Good to know as the LTSP server often has two NIC - one for the thin clients' subnet, and one for the Internet to help manage traffic. | 03:10 |
| tomreyn | this sounds like a good setup | 03:11 |
| TheProf | We push TBs of data around the network per month because of how it works. | 03:11 |
| tomreyn | https://ltsp.org/docs/installation/ suggests also removing snapd - an additional package management system introduced in the 'newer' (compared to 16.04) *ubuntu* versions | 03:12 |
| TheProf | I know that was in there and I always did that - recently it seems that it runs OK with snapd | 03:13 |
| tomreyn | i see there's #ltsp here but it's bridge to their (apparently preferred) matrix chat may or may no longer be active | 03:14 |
| TheProf | Yes - but they focus on questions specifically related to LTSP - this was a base distro issue | 03:15 |
| tomreyn | i.e. for ltsp specific 'live' support, you may want to go to https://app.element.io/#/room/#ltsp:matrix.org | 03:15 |
| tomreyn | right | 03:15 |
| tomreyn | these old lsi controllers have a firmware flashing option to convert them to more traditional controlelrs: https://www.vladan.fr/flash-dell-perc-h310-with-it-firmware/ | 03:18 |
| TheProf | It used to be its own distro or merged in with Edubuntu until that was stopped a long time ago. Then it became an add-on and Ubuntu-mate is the preferred distro. Works well in schools and such. | 03:18 |
| tomreyn | but that's quite under the hood and can result in bricking the device | 03:18 |
| TheProf | Is hardware RAID like this preferable to software RAID? | 03:18 |
| tomreyn | good to learn this works well in schools :) | 03:19 |
| tomreyn | well, proper hardware raid with a BBU and lots of cache is usually considered to be preferrable to software raid. but that's not what you have, i think. | 03:20 |
| TheProf | Yes - at one point we had all the computers in the building running it via LTSP. 50+ including all admin and staff. And I just need to update and maintain Ubuntu-mate on the server and all the clients are instantly updated. | 03:20 |
| tomreyn | so in this case having the raid controller behave more like a traditional one (which the "IT firmware" does) and using software raid would be my personal preference | 03:21 |
| TheProf | I will look into the IT firmware | 03:22 |
| tomreyn | i'm pretty sure there will be some newer, likely more efficient approach than the old LTSP approach for the same or similar usecase nowadays. but if it works, and works well, well, why not. | 03:22 |
| tomreyn | (i'm thinking of building things with kubernetes or docker or lxc or the like) | 03:24 |
| TheProf | This version of LTSP is the newer and improved version - the previous one was a lot more work as you had the server OS and then you had an entirely separate OS for the clients as a chroot on the server, and the image would be built from that. | 03:25 |
| TheProf | The advantage was that you could have different images for different clients (32 vs 64 bit) | 03:25 |
| tomreyn | oh, i see. do you still have 32-bit-only client hardware, though? | 03:27 |
| TheProf | Not anymore | 03:27 |
| tomreyn | very well | 03:27 |
| TheProf | And it's no longer supported as almost no one had it. | 03:27 |
| TheProf | So the new version removes the chroot and the distro within a distro approach | 03:28 |
| tomreyn | this sounds good, and easier | 03:29 |
| tomreyn | although if the server gets compromised, so do the clients, i guess | 03:29 |
| tomreyn | but that was probably so previously, too | 03:29 |
| TheProf | Some people are now running it within docker or some other virtualization but I'm not competent enough to do that. | 03:29 |
| TheProf | Yes but it was fairly bullet-proof. The thin clients run on their own network and have no hard drives or anything and can't get back into the server without proper credentials | 03:30 |
| tomreyn | without having someone who had well mapped out this newer approach, i'd probably prefer the old one, too | 03:30 |
| TheProf | The students would regularly download viruses from the Internet and try to run them. I'd often have to run a command to search for .exe files and delete them all | 03:31 |
| tomreyn | :) | 03:31 |
| TheProf | I think I am set. Thank you so much for your help | 03:32 |
| tomreyn | good luck! | 03:35 |
| tomreyn | there's also #ubuntu-server and #ubuntu for server (and general foundation) specific questions - often more vivid than here (especially #ubuntu) | 03:36 |
| TheProf | I noticed them in the channel list but didn't want to start there and get told off to come here :) | 03:37 |
| tomreyn | you picked the right place for anything ubuntu mate. :) | 03:39 |
| TheProf | Thank you. Have a nice day | 03:40 |
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