Obscure errors configuring software in Kickstart %POST script

[Robert J Lee]

Sorry if this is not strictly relevant, but I wanted to give this back
to the community in some form.

Since I've spent some time working this out, it might be useful to note
that the permissions on the device files /dev/* are different between
running an install and running a live system.

If, for instance, you try to create a Postgresql database on Red Hat
Enterprise 5 using "service postgres start" in a kickstart script, then
it will create the pg_log directory but then fail. (Of course, the
pg_log directory is left there so initdb will then refuse to create the
database again, but that's by the by).

The solution to this is to ensure that users other than root have
whatever read/write access they need to the device files they are using.

Many servers are shipped with databases and software pre-installed, and
so it wouldn't surprise me if this affected other major software
packages, any yet I couldn't find anything on the issue with a Google
search.

Maybe people are giving up and doing manual installs, or cloning disk
images or something? Perhaps this could be made more prominent in the
documentation?

Anyway, I hope that helps someone. Getting an obscure error like
"/dev/null: Permission denied" (when it was actually another device file
causing the problem) isn't too easy to figure out.

Robert J. Lee

-- 
Robert Lee
Java Programmer
Actual Systems UK Ltd
e: robert at actual-systems.com
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