Anaconda kickstart options and lowlevel netboot.img input options.

I am using a kickstart.cfg file to load power 5 lpars via network install. I use a bootp server

to deliver the RedHat netboot.img to the victim machine, I set the boot-file SMS env variable to pass boot image parms to netboot.img. Here's what I pass:

text ip=9.3.22.104 netmask=255.255.255.128 gateway=9.3.22.1 nameserver=9.0.7.1 ksdevice=eth0 ks=nfs:9.3.80.16:/lpars/sift22104.cfg

This lets the netboot.img config eth0 to access the ks file on the server.

I have this network line in the /lpars/sift22104.cfg kickstart file:

network --device eth0 --bootproto static --ip 9.3.22.104 --netmask 255.255.255.128 --gateway 9.3.22.1 --nameserver 9.0.7.1 --hostname sift22104.austin.ibm.com

This works just fine and the install completes.

I need to make this work on lpars that have never been loaded before and these lpars can have several eth adapters so the user will not know what order the adatpers will be configured so he can't specify eth0 or eth1 in the options above. I have expect code that goes thru the SMS menus and attempts to ping the server on each eth adatper until it finds one that is connected: I can pull the mac address for that card and could at that point create the netboot.img boot parms line that includes the mac address, but there is no way I can know what ethX redhat will confgure this card as. I tried changing the netboot.img parms line to:

text ip=9.3.22.104 netmask=255.255.255.128 gateway=9.3.22.1 nameserver=9.0.7.1 ksdevice=eth-id-2a:ca:30:00:40:02 ks=nfs:9.3.80.16:/lpars/sift22104.cfg

and the kickstart network line to this:

network --device eth-id-2a:ca:30:00:40:02 --bootproto static --ip 9.3.22.104 --netmask 255.255.255.128 --gateway 9.3.22.1 --nameserver 9.0.7.1 --hostname sift22104.austin.ibm.com

But it did not work.. I got a syntax error back from anaconda complaining about this:

self.setNetwork(id, bootProto, ip, netmask, ethtool, device=device, dhcpclass=dhcpclass, essid=essid, wepkey=wepkey)
File "/usr/lib/anaconda/installclass.py", line 332, in setNetwork
dev = devices[device]
KeyError: 'eth-id-2a:ca:30:00:40:02'

I have searched thru doc's till I am blue and can't find out if there is some way (any correct syntax) to pass the mac address to netboot.img and anaconda instead of the ethX name.

Dose anyone know how this can be done, is it even in the netboot.img/anaconda code to all this and deal with the mac address?

This is the last thing I need to fully automate these installs for my users with kickstart instead of using expect to fill out all those changing install menus in text mode.

thanks

tom miller IBM.