loading kickstart file from hard drive (was RE: removing rpms in %pre during kickstart upgrade installation)

[Sean Goller]

argh, my bad. I was typing out the grub info, and typoed.
ks=hd:hda1:/ks.cfg is what I have.

 

Is there a way to debug this? there really isn't any information printed
out on vt3 about what's going on.

 

-S.

 

________________________________

From: kickstart-list-bounces at redhat.com
[mailto:kickstart-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Gunnett, Eric
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2006 2:43 PM
To: Discussion list about Kickstart
Subject: RE: removing rpms in %pre during kickstart upgrade installation

 

I believe this line:

ks=hd:hda1/ks.cfg

 

Should be the following:

 

ks=hd:hda1:/ks.cfg

 

Hope this works.

 

________________________________

From: kickstart-list-bounces at redhat.com
[mailto:kickstart-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Sean Goller
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2006 2:31 PM
To: Discussion list about Kickstart
Subject: RE: removing rpms in %pre during kickstart upgrade installation

 

So I've gotten a bit farther, but I am unable to get the kernel to load
the kickstart file off the hard drive. The partition map on the HD is
/dev/hda1 is /boot, and /dev/hda2 is /. I've put ks=hd:hda1:/ks.cfg in
the append line of the relevant grub entry, and it never seems to find
it, even though that's where I've placed ks.cfg (in /boot when the
system is booted normally) Right now the grub entry looks like:

 

title Upgrade

root (hd0,0)

kernel /vmlinuz-upgrade ro root=LABEL=/

initrd /initrd-upgrade.img

append lang= ramdisk_size=8192 vga=788 ks=hd:hda1/ks.cfg upgradeany

 

-S.

 

________________________________

From: kickstart-list-bounces at redhat.com
[mailto:kickstart-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Shabazian, Chip
Sent: Friday, October 06, 2006 11:46 AM
To: Discussion list about Kickstart
Subject: RE: removing rpms in %pre during kickstart upgrade installation

 

If you can copy a file onto the device and execute it, then you can do
the entire build with that one file.  Copy a script that removes the
unwanted rpms, installs the build kernel, sets up grub, and reboots the
box.  The server will build completely unattended and the unwanted rpms
will already be removed.

 

Chip

 

________________________________

From: kickstart-list-bounces at redhat.com
[mailto:kickstart-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Sean Goller
Sent: Friday, October 06, 2006 11:40 AM
To: Discussion list about Kickstart
Subject: RE: removing rpms in %pre during kickstart upgrade installation

Unfortunately I am constrained and cannot do anything that involves
something other than booting with a CD or copying a file onto the device
and having it executed. The only other possibility is if, like you said,
I could boot with the kickstart kernel and run a script to remove the
rpms then run the installation initrd. But that seems like even more
hoops than my original attempt.

 

-Sean.

 

________________________________

From: kickstart-list-bounces at redhat.com
[mailto:kickstart-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Shabazian, Chip
Sent: Friday, October 06, 2006 11:32 AM
To: Discussion list about Kickstart
Subject: RE: removing rpms in %pre during kickstart upgrade installation

 

I'm not sure how you are starting the kickstart, but the way I would
probably do this is to simply remove the rpms BEFORE kickstarting the
box.  As long as I was touching the box anyway, I would copy the
kickstart kernel down to the box, and set it up in grub to boot.  This
way you would still be only touching each box once.

 

Chip

 

________________________________

From: kickstart-list-bounces at redhat.com
[mailto:kickstart-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Sean Goller
Sent: Friday, October 06, 2006 11:22 AM
To: kickstart-list at redhat.com
Subject: removing rpms in %pre during kickstart upgrade installation

Hi,

            I'm currently embroiled in a project to upgrade a RHEL3
installation to RHEL4 unattended via kickstart.

 

            I need to do some cleanup work in the %pre section on the
existing installation. (installation state is known and fixed) More
specifically, I need to remove some rpms. I have tried this two ways.
First, I tried using rpm -r to reset the root of the effective
filesystem to /mnt/sysimage (I mount the filesystem manually) but that
didn't seem to work for some reason. What I'm doing now is mounting the
partition, writing a script (removerpms.sh) into /mnt/sysimage/tmp, then
running chroot /mnt/sysimage /tmp/removerpms.sh. Afterwards I umount the
partition. The rpms are successfully removed, however anaconda
subsequently errors out because the umount has failed. I found that
/proc was getting mounted as a side effect of the script running, so I
added a umount for that. Here's the weird part: If I deliver the
kickstart file over the network, and use an HTTP-based install source,
it works. However, if I change the kickstart file to use CD
installation, and put it on the CD, it errors out because umount doesn't
work. /etc/mtab reveals nothing mounted other than /mnt/sysimage, 

 

            Any thoughts on how to resolve this? I'm about to compile a
static version of lsof to check on this, but if anyone has successfully
solved this problem before (removing rpms in %pre via kickstart) I'd
appreciate some pointers. Google has not been good to me.

 

 

-Sean.

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