Anaconda early startup failure - traceback

[whitivery]

whitivery <co55-sy1t at dea.spamcon.org> wrote:

>whitivery <co55-sy1t at dea.spamcon.org> wrote:
>
>>whitivery <co55-sy1t at dea.spamcon.org> wrote:
>>
>>>James Cammarata <jimi at sngx.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>On Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:54:34 -0400, Kyle Powell <kpowell at redhat.com> wrote:
>>>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>>>> Hash: SHA1
>>>>> 
>>>>> whitivery wrote:
>>>>>> We have a working Kickstart server for CentOS 4.4, building
>>>>>> targets running CentOS 4.4.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I built a new server with CentOS 5.3, to build CentOS 5.3
>>>>>> targets, adapting for the changes I noticed as I went along.  The
>>>>>> new server boots and runs but won't build a target unit.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> When I PXE-boot a target unit, I get the boot menu and pick an
>>>>>> entry, it starts the early part fine, loads stage2.img OK, shows
>>>>>> a couple screens then a "Retrieving installation information"
>>>>>> dialog/progress bar, and just when/after that gets to 100%, it
>>>>>> halts with a traceback.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Looks like you need more RAM:
>>>>> http://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=19367&forum=37
>>>>> 
>>>>> Same thing with Fedora:
>>>>> http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=499585
>>>>> 
>>>>> Minimum RAM requirement for RHEL 5 is 512MB. I assume that applies to
>>>>> CentOS as
>>>>> well:
>>>>> http://www.redhat.com/rhel/compare/
>>>>
>>>>Yes I've seen this same error on systems with insufficient ram (usually
>>>>VM's).  The key is that it fails on the lspci call, which is exactly where
>>>>all of mine would fail.
>>>
>>>Thanks to you and Kyle for the answers - I tried another box with
>>>512M RAM and it worked fine.  Seems nuts that hundreds of
>>>millions of bytes of memory can't even start a text mode install.
>>>
>>>With the box that worked, I still see some warnings in the
>>>anaconda.log like the following - do I need some additional
>>>kickstart settings or something to avoid these?:
>>>
>>>  I don't need DNS hostname lookup so why is it trying?:
>>>21:00:01 ERROR   : no DNS servers, can't look up hostname
>>>21:00:01 ERROR   : no DNS servers, can't look up hostname
>>>
>>>  I specified "url" so why these messages?:
>>>21:00:01 ERROR   : got to setupCdrom without a CD device
>>>21:00:22 WARNING : no floppy devices found but we'll try fd0 anyway
>>>
>>>  I specified "text" so why does it say "not available" - it's
>>>  available, I just prefer text install:
>>>21:00:25 WARNING : Graphical installation not available...  Starting text
>>>mode.
>>>
>>>  What does this mean?:
>>>21:00:28 WARNING : Unable to find temp path, going to use ramfs path
>>>
>>>  Why these?:
>>>21:00:32 WARNING : step installtype does not exist
>>>21:00:32 WARNING : step complete does not exist
>>>21:00:32 WARNING : step complete does not exist
>>>21:00:32 WARNING : step complete does not exist
>>>21:00:32 WARNING : step complete does not exist
>>>21:00:32 WARNING : step complete does not exist
>>>21:00:32 WARNING : step complete does not exist
>>>21:00:32 WARNING : step complete does not exist
>>>21:00:32 WARNING : step complete does not exist
>>>21:00:32 WARNING : step complete does not exist
>>>21:00:32 WARNING : step complete does not exist
>>>21:00:32 WARNING : step complete does not exist
>>>21:00:32 WARNING : step complete does not exist
>>>21:00:32 WARNING : step complete does not exist
>>>
>>>  These seem to be bugs:
>>>21:00:36 WARNING : /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/snack.py:250:
>>>DeprecationWarning: integer argument expected, got float
>>>  self.w = _snack.scale(width, total)
>>>
>>>21:00:36 WARNING : /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/snack.py:247:
>>>DeprecationWarning: integer argument expected, got float
>>>  self.w.scaleSet(amount)
>>>
>>>21:00:48 WARNING : /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/repos.py:68:
>>>RuntimeWarning: YumProgress.progressbar called when popped
>>>  self.callback.progressbar(num, len(repos), repo.id)
>>>
>>>  In addition, there are numerous "WARNING: <something> doesn't
>>>  exist" scattered in the log near the end of the install.
>>
>>Following up to my post: another problem is that %end still
>>doesn't work - using it to end the packages, pre, or post
>>sections, it causes a fatal failure, kickstart stops.
>>
>>I expected this with my old CentOS 4.4 kickstart/anaconda, but
>>not with the much newer CentOS 5.3 one - the web documentation
>>implies that it should work.
>
>Yet another follow-up problem/question: in the old CentOS 4.4 the
>--erroronfail didn't work.  I thought it was supposed to work in
>this version (CentOS 5.3), but trying it in both the pre and post
>sections, it doesn't seem to do anything.  If a command returns
>non-zero, or a bad (non-existent) command is run in either
>section, in the latter case there's a complaint in tty3 but in
>either case no effect on the install, it keeps going.
>
>Maybe this is how they are supposed to work, the documentation
>doesn't really say exactly what happens or what is considered a
>failure.


Any help, hints, or clues on the above (log warnings, --erroronfail
and %end not working)?