Network kickstart weirdness

[Peter Larsen]

It was my big mystery too - until I realized that the devil was in our 
switch. The PXE seems to send a few "up/down" signals to our switch so 
it finds DHCP rather "fast" ... 2-4 seconds. However, once booted and 
the RH installer runs through the same steps, the switch is taking 
forever to reset/open the port. This results in a time-out, and 
kickstart asking for network information - it assumes something is wrong.

My "solution" is no more than just hitting "ok" when being asked for 
network information, and on the second try our switch has finally gotten 
around to opening up again, and things work.

I don't know if that helps you - it's not a fool proof situation; but in 
our cases we only use Kickstart to build a baseline system on new boxes. 
  So it's no big deal to us.

Regards
   Peter Larsen

Dan Peterson wrote:
> We ran into this as well. It seems to be a problem with the E1000 adaptor
> (which the 2650 and 1850 [and others] are sporting). Check out
> http://www.redhat.com/archives/kickstart-list/2005-March/msg00087.html
> 
> We modified init.c as described in that note; rebuilt loader and put it back
> in the initrd.img. Problem solved. Not clean, not pretty, but effective!
> 
> If you need more detailed steps let me know.
> 
> Dan Peterson.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robinson, Andrew W. [mailto:andrew.w.robinson at mms.gov] 
> Sent: Monday, May 23, 2005 11:35 AM
> To: Discussion list about Kickstart
> Subject: Network kickstart weirdness
> 
> I think I have encountered this problem before, but cannot remember the
> solution. I am trying to perform a network kickstart on a Dell PE 2650
> server. The OS is RHEL 3 U4. No matter how I try this, the client seems not
> to recognize that the kickstart file is present. It always asks for network
> information. The system successfully obtained an address through dhcp for
> the pxe-boot, but then it cannot seem to get an address to start the
> installation process. I am perplexed. I do not know if this is a network
> problem, a problem with the kickstart file, or maybe a problem with
> anaconda. Can anyone suggest any clues that might enable me to figure out
> what is wrong?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Andrew Robinson
> 
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