bug in firstboot

[Gavin McDonald]

Hi All,

I found something calling itself a bug while building some RHEL ES 3.5
servers...  Maybe it's known already, or even fixed in ES4?  It's happened
numerous times, under the same or similar conditions.

The error occurs during "firstboot" after the installer finishes.  I go
through to the "Red Hat Login" page, and enter my RHN account info, and
click next.  The machine pauses for a long while before finally popping up a
dialog with a bunch of Python error messages.  Closing this window moves me
to the "identify system" page.

The problem occurs, because the machine has no valid network connection.
(I've put the cable in eth1 not eth0, the VLAN was not yet setup, a cable
was bad, the drivers for the card were in the installeR kernel but weren't
in the installeD kernel, etc.) I guess that once the machine has exhausted
the internal list of RHN servers, it fails forward, instead of indicating
that there is a network problem. That's part one of the problem.

Part two is more sinister.  Once I have restored network connectivity, the
python error persists.  There is no way to retry connecting to RHN, as
clicking back to the beginning screen of firstboot then going forward again
past the "Red Hat Login" page _immediately_ puts up the aforementioned
Python error dialog.   Ultimately, I am forced to back up to the license
agreement and refuse it, which gives me the option to reboot the machine.
Once the machine has booted with a stable network connection, all goes
smoothly.

For me it's only a minor annoyance, but I can see others less-skilled
getting snared in this trap, with what seems like no escape.  Especially if
they don't think to verify layer 1 connectivity.  Has anyone else ever seen
this in ES4?  Should I bother to file a bug report for ES 3.5?

Regards,

Gavin McDonald
========================
EVI Logistic Enterprises
email: me at gavitron.com
phone: (604) 313-3845