Recently I had to install TB 2.8 on a lean computing environment for SOHO establishment including Audiocodes MP118 ( 4FXS 4FXO) VOIP gateway and Sylvania Mini laptop for TB management. This mini laptop lacks built-in CD/DVD drive, thus installation was performed via an external USB CD/DVD drive. Installation process ended without any errors, yet on booting "no operating system" message appeared. Re-installation of TB ended similarly. At this point I asked for the help of my relative one of those LINUX Super-Gurus and here is his compilation for the solution for anyone interested in this kind of installation or a similar one:
TRIXBOX installation like other advanced LINUX distros is by deafult based on the LVM module (Logical Volume Manager) for dynamic management of storage devices which are installed on the server. It enables to dynamically on-the-fly allocate partitions or expand them without the need to reboot.
It is important to note that not every BIOS supports LVM booting which uses EBR (Enhanced Boot Record) which differs from MBR (Master Boot Record( used by the partition table and recognized by all OS so far. Saying that, there are computers (like the Sylvania) which won't boot after apparent successful installation.
The solution is simple, as was employed in our case – don't use LVM. Install the OS using the old way of mapping the disks on the partition table. In our case it was done using the "advanced" option of the GRUB menu of the installation disk. During this mode of installation you're opted to choose 3 types of automatic disk partitioning or a manual one . This 4th option, the manual one should be chosen. In the Disk Druid menu all partitions should be deleted as well as LVM definitions if they do exist. Then two partitions are defined as follows:
1. First partition type ext3 comprising most of the disk space (see following item) mapped to the / directory (root directory).
2. Second partition type swap - best practice rule says it should be twice as much as the system memory (i.e. at list 2GB swap allocation for 1GB memory module).
Finishing partitioning, GRUB should be installed on the Master Boot Record of the disk.
Now you get a bootable CENTOS-TB installation.
Addendum:
There are some who claim that the disk should be further partitioned and the 1st partition should be sub-partitioned for the home var usr etc. But, this subject is beyond the scope of this compilation. Further reading about the subject can be done in the following links.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_Volume_Manager_(Linux)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_boot_record
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_Boot_Record
http://linuxmafia.com/~karsten/Linux/FAQs/partition.html
Member Since:
2006-12-06