Issues with RH7 kickstart via USB and PXE

[Andrew Simpson]

Thanks for the tip about grub4dos.  I'll look into it.

I have all of this generally working right now, but I'm still wondering
about my questions.  I think the nfs version is was cleared up.  I'm still
wondering about the LiveOS image requirement.

I have to be able to use USB at times, as i'm not always in an environment
where pxe is available.

I, too, use the LABEL nomenclature.  If you don't, you'll be guessing all
day about which device to use.

Andrew Simpson

On Thu, Mar 9, 2017 at 5:20 PM, Greg Oliver <oliver.greg at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 8, 2017 at 6:39 AM, Andrew Simpson <simpsonar77 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > I have had a few issues migrating from RHEL 6 kickstart installs to RHEL
> 7.
> >
> > 1.  pxeboot installs were failing because I did not have the LiveOS
> > directory included in the customized ISO.  Is the LiveOS directory (and
> the
> > images in it) required in RHEL 7 now?
> > 2.  in pxeboot, I had to have the proper order of options in the
> > isolinux.cfg (pxelinux.cfg) file.  We were also using NFS for the
> install.
> > Lastly, the pxeboot server is older, and caused issues with the nfs
> version.
> > The order of relevant options was:
> >
> > inst.stage2=nfs4:10.0.0.1:/path/to/installdir
> > inst.ks=nfs:10.0.0.1:/path/to/installdir/ksdir/file.ks
> > inst.repo=nfs4:/10.0.0.1:/path/to/installdir
> >
> > Notice that inst.ks=nfs didn't require the nfs version, but repo and
> stage2
> > did.  The order was also important for whatever reason.
> >
> > 3.  USB installs worked under RHEL 6.  Now, I'm having issues.  Under
> RHEL 6
> > I would use live-iso-to-disk to write the files to the USB drive.  This
> came
> > from the livecd-tools packages in fedora.
> >
> > 4.  I currently am able to do PXE installs and DVD installs without fail.
> >
> > Under RHEL 7, the livecd-tools utilities no longer work for this as the
> > livecd-iso-to-disk script finds the LiveOS directory in the iso and stops
> > processing anything else, treating it as a LiveOS image.  So this goes
> back
> > to Number 1 above.  Is the LiveOS required?  Is there anyway to use
> > livecd-tools to generate the USB drive?
> >
> > The generation of the iso is correct and I'm using isohybrid on the .iso.
> > Under RHEL 6, the usb drive would work flawlessly.
> >
> > I switched to using the following while building on a RHEL.6 (soon to be
> > rhel.7) system:
> >
> > pv -treb my.iso | dd of=/dev/sdc conv=noerrors,notrunc
> >
> >
> > So, is there a better way to make a bootable usb via command line -or-
> what
> > is the proper way to do this?
>
> I assume RedHat made the same changes to RHEL that they made to Fedora
> a few release back that broke this same behaviour.  IIRC, I had to
> boot the live CD, and look at the root mountpoint and pass
> root=LABEL=<Whatever Was Mounted There> to get it working again.  They
> changed they way the rootfs was mounted in the live image.  A newer
> usb creater may fix it, but I ultimately switched 100% to using boot
> emulation with grub4dos and / or grub2 since I do not have time to rip
> all this apart every time they change something like this.  Ultimately
> I ditched using USB and switched 100% to PXE (iPXE and gPXE combo)
> since I only had to maintain one set of files and not 100s of USB
> sticks.
>
> Today unfortunately we are 100% virtual, so VMware gets PXE loaded and
> a generic RedHat image gets laid down.  I do not have backups that go
> back far enough to get my config files unfortunately.  If you are not
> EFI dependent, then grub4dos is by far the easiest for USB.  You just
> throw the vendor's ISO on the stcik and it boots it like a CD.
>
> eg:
>
> title Install ESXi - IBM 5.5u2
>     map --mem /ESXi-5.5u2-2068190-IBM_20150310.iso (hd32)
>     map --hook
>     chainloader (hd32)
>     boot
>
> Inside that ISO you can put the ks file, etc, or you can APPEND it
> directly there.
>
> If you need EFI, then you would need to use grub2.
>
> > Should the iso layout mostly be exactly like the oem iso, with the
> exception
> > of the changed isolinux.cfg file(s), ks files, and additional
> > packages/repodata?
> >
> > Thanks for all and any help/information you can provide!
> >
> > Andrew
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Kickstart-list at redhat.com
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>
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