Configure Disk

Summary

The disks of the target devices need to be configured before the rollout can start.

Requirements

  • SSH access from your setup device to all target devices

  • Double check that each machine has a hardware report saved under machines/YOUR-MACHINE-NAME/facter.json

Configuring Target Disks

By default clan uses disko which allows for declarative disk partitioning.

To see what disk templates are available run:

$ clan templates list

Available 'clan' templates
├── <builtin>
│   ├── default: Initialize a new clan flake
│   ├── flake-parts: Flake-parts
│   ├── flake-parts-minimal: Minimal flake-parts clan template
│   └── minimal: for clans managed via (G)UI
Available 'disko' templates
├── <builtin>
│   └── single-disk: A simple ext4 disk with a single partition
Available 'machine' templates
├── <builtin>
│   ├── flash-installer: Initialize a new flash-installer machine
│   └── new-machine: Initialize a new machine

For this guide we will select the single-disk template, that uses A simple ext4 disk with a single partition.

Tip

For advanced partitioning, see Disko templates or Disko examples. You can also contribute a disk template to clan core

To setup a disk schema for a machine run

clan templates apply disk single-disk jon --set mainDisk ""

Which should fail and give the valid options for the specific hardware:

Invalid value  for placeholder mainDisk - Valid options:
/dev/disk/by-id/nvme-WD_PC_SN740_SDDQNQD-512G-1201_232557804368

Re-run the command with the correct disk:

clan templates apply disk single-disk jon --set mainDisk "/dev/disk/by-id/nvme-WD_PC_SN740_SDDQNQD-512G-1201_232557804368"

Should now be successful

Applied disk template 'single-disk' to machine 'jon'

A disko.nix file is created in machines/jon You can have a look and customize it if needed.

Danger

Don't change the disko.nix after the machine is installed for the first time, unless you really know what you are doing. Changing disko configuration requires wiping and reinstalling the machine.

Checkpoint

Check your machines/ folders for the disk files. If a machine sub-folder does not contain a disk file, the setup ran into an error and needs to be restartet for the particular machine.

Up Next

After all preparations are done, we can now start the actual deployment process.