Installing the SLE Micro SelfInstall ISO image on systems with BIOS RAID fails

This document (000021353) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro (All Releases)
BIOS RAID
SelfInstall ISO

Situation

When BIOS RAID is configured in the host firmware, the SelfInstall ISO of SLE Micro does not recognize the RAID array, but only the individual devices. This prevents proper installation on the BIOS RAID array.

The regular YaST ISO installer works fine.

Resolution

Use the regular YaST ISO installer, or you can change the SelfInstall ISO boot behavior. It is changed by adding parameters to the kernel command-line for booting. You can enter the command-line via hitting the 'e' key after selecting the 'Install SLE Micro' entry. The most important are:

- rd.auto (Enables auto-assembly of all software RAID, LVM etc.)
- rd.kiwi.install.pass.bootparam (Ensures kiwi propagates the parameters to the following boots.)

Using rd.auto has, however, the disadvantage that dracut will not only assemble the BIOS RAID, but also other devices. Because of that, it is recommended to make sure that none of them are left on the disks from the previous installation. Alternatively, you can prevent assembly of some of those devices via other boot parameters; for that see the dracut.cmdline(7) man-page.

Cause

By default, when booting the SelfInstall ISO image, the system does not automatically assemble LVM, software RAID, multi-path or other similar devices. Some of the RAID controllers (BIOS RAID) do not export the array as a single device, but only put metadata on the respective disks and leave the assembly to the operating system.

This, however, means that it is not possible to deploy an image on the SelfInstall on a BIOS RAID without modifying the boot behavior as described in the Resolution section.

Status

Reported to Engineering

Additional Information

Because adding the parameters to the default images could cause issues when there are some RAMD or LVM left-overs on the disk, we do not intend to enable the auto-assembly of RAID arrays in current or future releases and will stay consistent with the default behavior of dracut itself.

The YaST ISO installer works differently - it includes logic to assemble or disassemble arrays individually; using it may be an option for installing in environments where control via kernel command line is not fine-grained enough.

Disclaimer

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