Kickstart Installs of FC2

MW Mike Weiner (5028) MWeiner at ag.com
Mon Jun 20 11:19:07 UTC 2005


>I am trying to setup a PXE/Kickstart box so that I can do some 
>unattended installs remotely.
[snip]

>Which also seems to work, but what isnt working properly is the ks=nfs 
>statement.

My favourite 3 debugging questions:
- What did you do?
- What happened?
- What do you think should happen?

You've gone into plenty of detail for #1, but I can't see any report of
an actual problem.

>I can see the server actually loading the bootloader and I can see this

>in the messages log now:
>
>Jun 16 14:11:48 yum1 rpc.mountd: authenticated mount request from 
>10.10.232.80:750 for /repo/fedora/linux/core/2/i386/os (/repo)

Then it looks like the kickstart file has been found and read
successfully. Remember that "ks=nfs" is only instructing anaconda to
fetch the kickstart file and second stage over NFS; the kickstart file
itself can specify a different source for the RPMs.

>Now, when I rebooted this test box this morning, it grabs an IP from 
>the dhcp server, is able to receive and load the pxelinux bootloader, 
>but in the virtual console 3 I see the following after it runs through 
>and loads the kernel:
>
>* NFS install method detected will use Rhupdates/

That's a way of extending/fixing anaconda with patches. Can be ignored.

[snip]
>* Running kickstart %pre scripts
>* All kickstart %pre scripts have been run
>
>Which confuses me a little bit as I don't quite understand where its 
>getting the nfs methof pointing to Rhupdates and some of the other 
>stuff.

OK. All looks fine so far - does it hang at this point?
---
Phil -

Thanks for the response, and by the way, I love your debugging
methodology - nice and simple and straightforward. Well, you're right,
it DOES seem to find the kickstart file (ks-fc2.cfg) though I did not
check to ensure it makes its way to /tmp/ks.cfg and it is being
instructed to mount the repo directory containing the "Fedora" tree of
the installation CDs. What is NOT happening is the actual install isnt
taking place, it seems to hang after the pre scripts are run (which
there arent any), and mounting VFS - just doesn't seem to want to do
anything after that point. I have verified that the installation tree I
am pointing at is valid (i.e. /repo/fedora/linux/core/2/i386/os *IS* a
copy of whats on the mirrors). I also threw the ISOs into
/repo/fedora/linux/core/2/i386/iso as I was interested to see if this
might work better - doing the install from ISOs instead of the raw tree
- though this isnt critical at this point, but I DO need to get the
installer working properly, as I have a few hundred boxes to go through
this process  :)

What else can I look for, or should I look at, to verify the install
process at this point? Any way to verify that kickstart is doing the
*right thing* ?

Appreciate any and all responses and assistance.
Michael Weiner




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