Autodesk Flame CentOS 7.2 Installation Tips

By Jason Yee

With the release of Flame Family 2018 (Flame, Flare and Flame Assist) on Linux, Red Hat is no longer supported. Supported operating systems are CentOS 7.2. Migrating to CentOS 7.2 requires a complete system rebuild using the Autodesk custom CentOS 7.2 ISO.

The Autodesk custom CentOS 7.2 ISO uses a kickstart configuration to automate the installation process.

However, this kickstart config expects the system drive to be /dev/sda. In some cases, such as installing from a USB drive, the system drive will be detected as /dev/sdb. User interaction will be required during installation to configure partitioning before the automated install can continue.  

The following shows the disk partitioning kickstart config. Note that the config only applies to sda.

This uses standard partitions.

/boot is 1GB
swap is 32GB
/ (root partition) is the remaining free space.

If your system drive is not sda, instead of the install completing without any user interaction, your install will stop with the following screen.

At this point, you are prompted to click Installation Destination to configure the drive partitioning. Click on INSTALLATION DESTINATION.

Select your system drive and under Partitioning, select I will configure partitioning.

Remove all existing partitions (select partition and click -)

Create the following partitions (click +)

Mount Point    Size                 Device Type
/boot               1GiB                standard partition
swap               32GiB              standard partition
/                      *                      standard partition

• this should the remaining AVAILABLE SPACE showing in the bottom left of the screen.

Click Done and continue the CentOS install!

What happens if I select Automatically configure partition?

A potential pitfall is to select Automatically configure partitioning. If this is selected, you will be given the option to reclaim space. This allows you to remove existing partitions.

Once all the existing partitions are cleared, the option to Begin Installation is available.

The problem is that your main root partition (/) will only be 50GB, and most of the space will instead be on the /home partition, which is not used on Flame systems.

Automatically configure partitioning uses LVM partitioning. We can use LVM tools to correct the partition sizes.

How do I resize LVM partitions on CentOS 7.2?

There are no LVM gui tools installed by default, but a quick trip to the command-line is all you need.
 
As root, open terminal and follow these steps.

1.         Type ‘df -h’ to see current disk partitions.

Eg. The following is from a 500GB system drive. Note only 50GB mounted on /, and there is 410GB mounted on /home.

Verify that you have no files in /home. Type ‘ls /home’ to list the contents of /home. Most likely it is empty, and this command will return you straight back to the prompt. If for some reason you do, you should back them up.

2. Unmount /home by typing ‘umount /home’

Now to remove the /home logical volume by typing ‘lvremove /dev/centos_vxfhost/home’. Type ‘y’ when prompted.

4. We can now extend the / (root) partition to use all the new available space by typing

Finally, we also need grow the xfs filesystem by typing:

6.   Verify that the size of / (root) has increased by typing ‘df -h’.

7.   If all looks good, you can then remove the /home mount from /etc/fstab.
ie. Open /etc/fstab and remove the following line.

For more info on setting up and optimising your Flame system, please touch base with our team or call us direct on 02 9431 6000 if you would like to discuss anything to do with this article or request a demo tailored to your requirements.