Bug 1384396

Summary: Extend Bootdisk table with firmware info
Product: Red Hat Satellite Reporter: Lukas Zapletal <lzap>
Component: Docs Provisioning GuideAssignee: Julie <juwu>
Status: CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE QA Contact: satellite-doc-list
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 6.3.0CC: juwu, lzap
Target Milestone: Unspecified   
Target Release: Unused   
Hardware: Unspecified   
OS: Unspecified   
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Last Closed: 2017-09-24 23:47:18 UTC Type: Bug
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Lukas Zapletal 2016-10-13 08:48:42 UTC 
Document URL: 

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Satellite/6.1/html/Provisioning_Guide/sect-Red_Hat_Satellite-Provisioning_Guide-Provisioning_a_Host_Using_a_Boot_Disk.html

Please add new column into the table called "Bootloader":

Host-specific image     iPXE
Full host image	        SYSLINUX
Generic image           iPXE

And also add a compatibility note:

Bootdisks based on iPXE are must have network card driver present in the iPXE project in order to intialize network stack and download Anaconda kernel and init ram disk. Check list of supported drivers list on the project page: http://ipxe.org/appnote/hardware_drivers for support.

Full host image which is based on SYSLINUX does not need to initialize network stack in order to boot the Anaconda installer, because it is embedded in the disk. For this reason, the bootdisk is slightly bigger (about 30 MB) but it allows booting of any hardware that is supported in RHEL.

Alternative approach is to use PXE-less discovery image which is also based on SYSLINUX and directly boots into small RHEL7-based OS and switches into Anaconda using kexec. No iPXE drivers are needed in this case as well.
Comment 2 Lukas Zapletal 2017-09-22 08:29:12 UTC 
Sure go ahead.
Comment 3 Julie 2017-09-24 23:47:18 UTC 
Documentation Link:
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us//6.2/html/provisioning_guide/provisioning_bare_metal_hosts#Provisioning_Bare_Metal_Hosts-Creating_New_Hosts_with_PXE-less_Provisioning 

"The Full host image is based on SYSLINUX and works with most hardware. When using an iPXE-based boot disk (Host image, Generic image, or Subnet image), see http://ipxe.org/appnote/hardware_drivers for a list of hardware drivers expected to work with an iPXE-based boot disk."