"pump" times out -- extend a few seconds more?

[Ramthun, William]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: kickstart-list-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:kickstart-list-
> bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of nate
> Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 10:33 AM
> To: kickstart-list at redhat.com
> Subject: Re: "pump" times out -- extend a few seconds more?
> 
> Bill-Schoolcraft said:
> > Hello Family,
> >
> > I have a series of switches, in racks, and one of them seems to be a
bit
> > slow so when kickstart goes for it's dhcp request, pump times out.
The
> > initial PXE takes much more time to get an "ack" at the initial
contact
> > than the same boxes in other racks with other switches but then
finally
> > starts chugging away -- it's the next dhcp request that fails, times
out.
> >
> > Today I took the same box, draped a cat6 cable to another, less
> > populated switch, and it kicked fine.
> >
> > (question)
> > So my question is, how or where can I place an argument to tell
> > kickstart's "pump" request to try longer before timing out.
> 
> just curious, what type of switch? many older cisco switches have
> STP on by default, if you set the port(s) to 'portfast' the links come
> up immediately rather than waiting ~45 seconds.
> 
> I'm not a cisco guy but if your switches are cisco the command
> is something like
> 
> int (interface)
> spanning-tree portfast
> ^Z
> wr mem
> 
> 
> e.g. on my old 3500s (IOS 12.0 is the latest they'll run)
> int fa0/5
> spanning-tree portfast
> 
> I haven't encountered any other switch vendors that have this
> 'feature' enabled by default. You can tell if it's on without
> even logging in(to the switch) by checking to see if the link
> light for the port spends a long time in the orange color
> before turning green. I've been told more modern cisco switches
> ship with this feature off by default.
> 
> as for extending the pump times, I'm not sure, so I can't
> answer your specific question :) maybe the above will help a bit..
> 
> I did a quick search on pump timeout, and what I did see was
> that it may be possible to extend the timeout by adding a
> /etc/pump_device.conf and using the option 'timeout <some number>'.
> 
> though you'll need to add that to the initrd image..not the
> easiest thing in the world.
> 
> nate
> 


I am experiencing a similar problem; however, my situation is slightly
different.

I have HP DL385's connected to a 48 port 10/100 module in a Cisco 6509
(with Sup 2 routing module).  I'm using the virtual CDROM via the HP ILO
(Integrated Lights Out) interface to perform the initial boot.  I mount
a customized version of RHEL3U5 CD1.  My kickstart file is specified as
an url.  The system boots and Anaconda starts, but before the link
negotiation can complete Anaconda times-out and I am dumped into an
interactive install.

A couple of data points:

1) The HP DL385 on-board NICs are manufactured by Broadcom.  I've read
about a known bug with link negotiation between the Broadcom NICs and
Cisco 48-port line cards.  The link negotiation works, it just takes a
"longer" time than with any other kind of NIC.

2) Setting the switch port NIC to enable "spanning-tree portfast" does
shorten the link negotiation time, but not enough to get around my
problem.

Work Arounds:

1) I will prebuild the kickstart configs and place them on my customized
RHEL3U5 CD.  I've been unsuccessful at reading the kickstart config from
the CDROM.  The driver supporting the ILO virtual cdrom does not name
the cdrom device as "cdrom".  Still reading up on this.

That's it so far,
-Bill