Kickstart across subnets

MW Mike Weiner (5028) MWeiner at ag.com
Tue Dec 27 19:42:26 UTC 2005


Dear list readers - 
 
I am having some major headaches trying to get this to work in my
production environment. My "design" is kickstart off a cd, to do an
install across NFS. The network is basically comprised of 4 vlans
(192.168.30.0/24,192.168.31.0/24,192.168.32.0/24,192.168.34.0/24) via
nfs - and i realize you can dhcp across subnets without some other
'magic' so, i have a dhcrelay running on each of the subnets. Now, for
some reason, the 3 subnets that are not native to that of the yum server
arent working. The subnet the kickstart box is on works, or at least
'seems' to work and the install goes fairly smoothly. I am unfortunately
1000miles away from these servers so its hard to tell whats actually
going on, but i created a bootable kickstart cd for the technicians
working in our datacenter, and whenever they use it on those 3 subnets
that fail - i see NOTHING in any logs on any of the dhcrelay servers nor
dhcpd server, as if the request is not even getting relayed. And i
really cant tell what is actually going on here when it fails. 
 
I created a ks boot cd, with all the required files (i.e. vmlinuz,
initrd.img, isolinux.bin, etc) and the key line in my isolinux.cfg is as
follows:
 
label linux
  kernel vmlinuz
  append ksdevice=eth1 console=tty0 load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0
initrd=initrd.img network ip=dhcp
ks=nfs:192.168.34.248:/tftpboot/ks-fc2.cfg selinux=0
 
which seems to work, anyone see an issue with this? Once, booted, it
SHOULD go out and try to grab in IP address from either a dhcrelay or
the main dhcpd server (depending on the subnet). Once it has an IP
address, it is supposed to continue on and mount the nfs share
containing the installation tree (/repo/fedora/linux/core/2/i386/os) and
complete in roughly 10 minutes. Below is my ks.cfg file (also called
ks-fc2.cfg on the tftpboot server). 
 
I am sure others have done cross subnet kickstarts, though poorly
documented, i was wondering if someone may have sometime to help me
debug this. I have to complete these 400+ kickstarts by the end of
January 2006.
 
I appreciate ANY pointers and assistance you may be able to provide.
 
Michael Weiner
 
# Kickstart file for Automated Fedora Core 2 installs via NFS
install
nfs --server=192.168.34.248 --dir=/repo/fedora/linux/core/2/i386/os
lang en_US.UTF-8
langsupport --default en_US.UTF-8 en_US.UTF-8
keyboard us
skipx
network --device eth1 --bootproto dhcp
rootpw --iscrypted $1$.pio2FpF$qdZBN7oU0oOG6R3oV6y5X.
firewall --disabled
selinux --disabled
authconfig --enableshadow --enablemd5
timezone America/New_York
bootloader --location=mbr --append rhgb quiet
 
# The following is the partition information
clearpart --linux
part /boot --fstype ext3 --size=101
part /disk2 --fstype ext3 --size=12289
part / --fstype ext3 --size=12289
part swap --size=2048
part /weblog --fstype ext3 --size=1 --grow
 
%packages --resolvedeps
@ web-server
@ mail-server
@ dns-server
@ dialup
@ network-server
@ sql-server
@ editors
@ admin-tools
@ system-tools
@ news-server
@ smb-server
@ authoring-and-publishing
@ sound-and-video
@ server-cfg
@ graphics
@ ftp-server
@ development-tools
@ engineering-and-scientific
@ text-internet
kernel-smp
grub
e2fsprogs
-cups
-isdn
-pcmcia
 
%post
# run rpm error report
rpm -Va --nofiles --nomd5 >> /tmp/rpm-problems.txt
 
# Update thyself
yum -y update
 
# The Last Thing happening in Kickstart:
# get a file via TFTP which indicates we are done.
echo "get Kickstart_end" | /usr/bin/tftp 192.168.96.11






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