[et-mgmt-tools] Troubleshooting

[Ole Ersoy]

Hi Pete,

> There are a couple things you can check - during your pxeboot phase do 
> you see a timeout or anything like that?

It does seem like the box pauses a little longer before it tells me it can't boot.

>  I find it helpful to do a 
> tcpdump on the cobbler box to see if infact the pxe and dhcp packets are 
> making it from the host to the server.

I need to read up on tcpdump.  I have a feeling it's going to be a valuable utility :-).

> 
> You can also tail /var/log/messages (by default) or /var/log/dhcpd (if 
> you setup a syslogd rule for dhcpd) to see if there are requests getting 
> through to the server.  

That I can handle.  This is what I get when I tail /var/log/messages:

[root at localhost cobbler]# tail /var/log/messages
May 20 13:59:02 localhost dhcpd: Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Server V3.0.6-Fedora
May 20 13:59:02 localhost dhcpd: Copyright 2004-2007 Internet Systems Consortium.
May 20 13:59:02 localhost dhcpd: All rights reserved.
May 20 13:59:02 localhost dhcpd: For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/
May 20 13:59:02 localhost dhcpd: Not searching LDAP since ldap-server, ldap-username, ldap-password and ldap-base-dn were not specified in the config file
May 20 13:59:02 localhost dhcpd: Wrote 0 leases to leases file.
May 20 13:59:03 localhost dhcpd: Listening on LPF/eth0/00:0e:a6:65:57:99/192.168.1/24
May 20 13:59:03 localhost dhcpd: Sending on   LPF/eth0/00:0e:a6:65:57:99/192.168.1/24
May 20 13:59:03 localhost dhcpd: Sending on   Socket/fallback/fallback-net
May 20 14:03:57 localhost xinetd[3381]: EXIT: tftp status=0 pid=3661 duration=1048(sec)


So it looks like there was some activity right around the time I tried it, but I'm not sure exactly how to turn this log into further action.  Any ideas?

> One common mistake I make is that I forget to 
> add a subnet in my dhcp.template, and because of this my pxe requests 
> will fail (as dhcpd won't be configured to offer leases on that 
> subnet).  This will usually show up in your log file.

Hmmm - Now that you mention that I wonder if mine is goofed, because the log says "Wrote 0 leases to leases file".  I let cobbler manage the DHCP configuration, and the configuration file looks like this:

ddns-update-style interim;

allow booting;
allow bootp;

ignore client-updates;
set vendorclass = option vendor-class-identifier;

subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
    option routers          192.168.1.1;
    option subnet-mask      255.255.255.0;
    range dynamic-bootp     192.168.1.100 192.168.1.254;
    filename                "/pxelinux.0";
    default-lease-time      21600;
    max-lease-time          43200;
    next-server             $next_server;
}

$insert_cobbler_system_definitions


This seems ok, although I'm not an expert.  My router has address 192.168.1.1 and this is a home environment so I only have machines 192.168.1.6, which is the cobbler server, and a few others 192.168.1.2, and 192.168.1.3...+ the machine that is the bare metal one.

If anything jumps out, please let me know.  I'll try to smarten up on tcpdump, and hopefully that will reveal more.

Thanks again for all the tips!

Ole




> 
> 
> -pete
> 
> 
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>