RE: Kickstart via PXE/NFS

["Shabazian, Chip" <Chip Shabazian bankofamerica com>]

You still have never answered the question.  We are trying to help you here.  It doesn't matter whether or not your second NIC is plugged in, it does however matter whether or not it is on the same bus as the NIC you are pxebooting from.  As for why it works in pxe and doesn't work in kickstart, they are two entirely different systems.  pxe comes from the system BIOS, and the kickstart installer comes from RHEL.  The reason this is important is because RHEL 4 + enumerates the bus differently (and according to Red Hat properly) than either pxe or previous RHEL versions.

 

As for "complicated", my time goes back to building "unattend.txt" files for Windows 95 (and every version since), and kickstart is FAR more powerful and easier to use than any of the windows technologies that are included with the OS.  And if you don't like kickstart, try using YAST sometime, that will make you old before your time.

 

This list is very helpful and has gotten many people to quality build setups, but disparaging the tool that we are trying to help you deploy isn't going to win friends or help.

 

At the end of the day, if you don't like anaconda, do something about it.  It's open source and you can dive in and fix the things you don't like, and submit the patches upstream.  There are many things *I* would like to see changed, but I don't have the time to write a patch, so I have to live with it or work around it.  At least now I can make the changes if I wanted to... Sure wish I could have done that in Windows 10 years ago when I was trying to get an unattend.txt file to bring up a backup domain controller that wasn't online with the primary since it hadn't been built yet and was located in a different state.

 

Chip

---

From: kickstart-list-bounces redhat com [mailto:kickstart-list-bounces redhat com] On Behalf Of SSTinsley upsfreight com
Sent: Monday, May 14, 2007 12:39 PM
To: Discussion list about Kickstart
Cc: Discussion list about Kickstart; kickstart-list-bounces redhat com
Subject: RE: Kickstart via PXE/NFS

kickstart-list-bounces redhat com wrote on 
05/14/2007 02:48:04 PM:

> How many NIC's do you have in the box? 
 Are they all embedded, or 
> are there some on cards? 

2 NICs. Only one is active an plugged in to a 
switch. 

While it may be powerful, it seems 
to be way more complicated than should be required. 

If the server can find its initial IP via DHCP to load pxelinux and 
to load the kernel, why is it 
unable to 
complete the last step and locate the kickstart file? I have specified the 
ksdevice 
several different ways and none have 
been successful (ksdevice=eth0, =link, =bootip with ipappend, =eth1) 
and in all cases anaconda ends up unable to get the IP and 
prompts me for static network configuration. 
I 
enter the needed network information and provide the NFS information to reach 
the RH install image and 
the box is able to 
read the o/s image and start an interactive install. 

I have also dropped to command line (ctl-alt-f2) and verified that 
the nfs directory holding the KS file 
can be 
mounted. And I have verified it can be retrieved with http using wget. And still 
anaconda is 
unable to retrieve the file with 
either nfs or http. 


> 
  
> Kickstart is a very powerful and 
useful tool that we use globally to
> build over 1000 distributed systems 
each year from a centralized and
> managed location, and although it has 
bugs like any product, most 
> issues like you are having tend to be 
infrastructure or manufacturer related. 
> 
  
> From: 
kickstart-list-bounces redhat com [mailto:kickstart-list-
> 
bounces redhat com] On Behalf Of SSTinsley upsfreight com
> Sent: Monday, 
May 14, 2007 11:36 AM
> To: Discussion list about Kickstart
> Cc: 
Discussion list about Kickstart; kickstart-list-bounces redhat com
> 
Subject: Re: Kickstart via PXE/NFS

> 
> I made a change to pxe cfg file to have ks.cfg file read via http. 
> 
> It fails too. However, if I look in the anaconda log I see the 
> message getting ks.cfg 
> but then failed to transfer ks.cfg to 
fd. The snoop from the KS 
> server side shows the HTTP 
> retrieval 
of the KS config file. Is it really trying to use an fd 
> device, a 
floppy? These 
> Dell servers do not include floppys. 
> 
> 
Redhat sure has taken something that should be relatively easy and 
> made 
it a pain in the butt. 
>   
> 
> 
kickstart-list-bounces redhat com wrote on 05/14/2007 01:29:54 PM:
> 
> > if you page-up in vty3, can you see what your kernel command line 
is?
> > alternately if it makes it to shell in vty2, 'cat 
/proc/cmdline' - i
> > wonder if it's actually doing the ipappend 
stuff. you might need a
> > newer pxelinux.0 if not. also, instead of 
'ksdevice=bootif' you can do
> > 'ksdevice=link ip=dhcp'  ; the 
bootif argument is more useful if you
> > have 2 nics enabled/link-up 
and want to make sure it doesnt pxeboot
> > out one interface and then 
ks out the other.
> > 
> > -=Eric
> > 
> > 
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NOTE: THIS DOCUMENT MAY CONTAIN CONFIDENTIAL AND NONPUBLIC INFORMATION. IT IS INTENDED ONLY FOR THE USE OF THE INDIVIDUAL(S) OR ENTITY(IES) NAMED ABOVE, AND OTHERS SPECIFICALLY AUTHORIZED TO RECEIVE IT. If you are not the intended recipient of this document, you are notified that any review, dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify me immediately by return email, delete the electronic message and destroy any printed copies. Thank you for your cooperation.