Bug 682364

Summary:	RHNS uses FQDN before DNS is available for lookups.
Product:	Red Hat Satellite 5	Reporter:	David Barr <redhat>
Component:	Docs Deployment Guide	Assignee:	Lana Brindley <lbrindle>
Status:	CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE	QA Contact:	Pavel Novotny <pnovotny>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	540	CC:	cperry, mhideo, pnovotny
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2011-06-16 22:16:54 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:
Bug Blocks:	677505

Description David Barr 2011-03-05 00:12:28 UTC

+++ Description of problem:
When attempting to kickstart a server from a RHNS-based kickstart configuration, I got this error:

"Unable to retrieve http://f.q.d.n/ks/dist/<distro>/stage2.img"

After some pointless searching on line, I read this note under the "url" option in Systems -> kickstart -> Profiles -> <profile> -> Kickstart Details -> Advanced Options:

"NOTE: Default RHN Satellite kickstart URLs are stored with just the file path, allowing RHN Satellite to know when to dynamically adjust the hostname in the URL rendered in the kickstart file. (for proxies, etc) You may customize this value by changing it to a fully qualified URL, which will appear in the kickstart file as is."

So, I swapped

"--url /<repository>/<path>/<distro>"

for

"http://obf.usc.ate.123/ks/dist/<distro>/stage2.img"

which solved the problem.

My conclusion is that the installing kernel or initrd doesn't appear to have a workable DNS client available to make queries at the time the installation needs to find stage2.img. My suggested fix is that RHNS use IP addressing whenever possible in its kickstart configurator.


+++ Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
satellite-embedded-oracle-5.4.0-20101025-rhel-5-x86_64

+++ How reproducible:
Every time.

+++ Steps to Reproduce:
1. Set the url to a relative value, as noted above.
2. Attempt a bare metal kickstart install.
3. Get the error.
  
+++ Actual results:
Error.

+++ Expected results:
stage2.img is find without an error.

+++ Additional info:
I searched for RHNS bugs involving DNS. I only found two and neither were close to what I was seeing. I apologize if this has been found and fixed in 5.4.1.

Comment 1 David Barr 2011-03-05 00:26:36 UTC

Whoops. That url swap did include the "--url" with the full URL path.

Comment 2 David Barr 2011-03-07 16:59:22 UTC

Okay, I can turn this into a documentation bug, really easily.

Can I get someone update Deployment Guide section 5.8.1.2.1. - "Configuring an Existing DHCP Server" to specify that DHCP configurations for bare metal kickstarts must include

option domain-name $DOMAIN_NAME;
option domain-name-servers $IP_ADDRESS1, $IP_ADDRESS2;

This will allow the use of hostnames.

Comment 3 Tomas Lestach 2011-03-08 09:52:48 UTC

Reseting assignee to default for component

Comment 4 Lana Brindley 2011-03-22 03:39:48 UTC

<para>
	Configure your DHCP server to point to your domain and IP addresses, by including the following lines. This will allow it to use hostnames to perform te installation:
</para>
<programlisting>
option domain-name <replaceable>DOMAIN_NAME</replaceable>;
option domain-name-servers <replaceable>IP_ADDRESS1</replaceable>, <replaceable>IP_ADDRESS2</replaceable>;
</programlisting>

LKB

Comment 5 Pavel Novotny 2011-04-21 12:28:56 UTC

Taking this bug for verification.

Comment 6 Pavel Novotny 2011-04-21 15:22:36 UTC

(In reply to comment #4)
> <para>
>  Configure your DHCP server to point to your domain and IP addresses, by
> including the following lines. This will allow it to use hostnames to perform
> te installation:
> </para>
> <programlisting>
> option domain-name <replaceable>DOMAIN_NAME</replaceable>;
> option domain-name-servers <replaceable>IP_ADDRESS1</replaceable>,
> <replaceable>IP_ADDRESS2</replaceable>;
> </programlisting>
> 
> LKB

Verified
in Satellite 5.4.1 "Getting Started Guide", section "2.5.1. Kickstarting from Bare Metal".

Comment 7 Lana Brindley 2011-05-06 00:22:41 UTC

This book has now been dropped to translation (RT#75265).
No further updates can be accepted. Please raise a new bug for any changes.
LKB

Comment 8 Lana Brindley 2011-06-16 22:16:54 UTC

5.4.1 Satellite books are now available on docs.redhat.com. Please raise a new bug for any issues.

LKB