Bug 683900

Summary: Kickstart installation RHEL 6 - if nfs specified - the install.img will be loaded from CD
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Reporter: Diana Chinces <chincesdiana>
Component: anacondaAssignee: Anaconda Maintenance Team <anaconda-maint-list>
Status: CLOSED NEXTRELEASE QA Contact: Release Test Team <release-test-team>
Severity: urgent Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 6.0Keywords: Reopened
Target Milestone: rc   
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Hardware: All   
OS: All   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Last Closed: 2011-03-16 13:56:51 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Anaconda log none

Description Diana Chinces 2011-03-10 15:43:22 UTC
Description of problem:
When trying to do a RHEL6 kickstart based installation and you specify a nfs server on which the installation media can be found - it still loads the install.img from the CD.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:


Steps to Reproduce:
1. Attach a RHEL6 installation CD to a machine.
2. Begin a kickstart-based installation and specify the nfs for the install media
  
Actual results:
The install.img is loaded from the CD

Expected results:
The install.img should be loaded from the nfs share.

Additional info: Log information

kickstartFromNfs
results of nfs, server: ... dir is ..
trying to mount CD device /dev/sr0 on /mnt/stage2
mounted loopback device /mnt/runtime on ...
....
Detected stage2 image on CD
no stage2= given, assuming nfs:....
setting language to ..
starting STEP_METHOD
stage2 url is cdrom:////dev/sr0:/mnt/stage2

Comment 1 Chris Lumens 2011-03-10 15:52:10 UTC
This is a speed optimization in anaconda - if you provide the install.img locally, there's no point in transferring it over a network.  If you really need the install.img transferred from the network (don't know why it matters), then you'll need to disconnect the CD and boot from network instead.

Comment 2 Diana Chinces 2011-03-11 08:07:49 UTC
From the documentation http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/rhel6/rhel_6_installation/rhel_6_installation_ch-parmfiles-Miscellaneous_parameters.html we can see that if stage2 kernel argument is given it will take precedence over all other methods.

cat /proc/cmdline
ks=... stage2=... ksdevice=...

Even so, the install.img is loaded from the CD. Is this the correct behavior ?

Comment 4 Chris Lumens 2011-03-11 15:44:55 UTC
Please attach the complete /tmp/anaconda.log.  I can't tell what's going on from just the snippets with the most useful values removed.

Comment 5 Diana Chinces 2011-03-11 16:01:32 UTC
Created attachment 483760 [details]
Anaconda log

Added anaconda log.

Comment 6 Diana Chinces 2011-03-14 11:32:04 UTC
Can you please confirm whether this is really a bug ? Or a misuse of kernel arguments ? Thanks.

Comment 7 Chris Lumens 2011-03-14 20:21:41 UTC
Why are you specifying stage2=, AND using a CD to boot from, AND specifying an nfs source in your kickstart file?

Comment 8 Diana Chinces 2011-03-15 07:35:46 UTC
So the scenario is as follows:

- the CD is connected
- we PXE boot 
- vmlinuz, initrd are retrieved over nfs 
- stage2 is used from the CD -- we really need here the stage2 that is shared on the nfs.

Comment 9 Chris Lumens 2011-03-15 14:40:34 UTC
Why don't you just do an NFS install entirely?  Skip the whole CD part, and the stage2 image will get pulled from NFS instead of the CD.

I am extremely hesitant to do anything to the code here.  It's notoriously difficult code, in which any fix has a very high likelihood of breaking some other use case.

Regardless, we will not have this problem in RHEL7 since there will no longer be a stage2 image.

Comment 10 Diana Chinces 2011-03-16 13:44:49 UTC
We do not have that option. Can we force somehow the CD to be ejected ?

Comment 11 Diana Chinces 2011-03-16 13:47:56 UTC
In RedHat5 by writing a flag in /proc/sys/dev/cdrom/autoeject the CD was auto-eject. However, this no longer works in RedHat6.

Comment 12 Chris Lumens 2011-03-16 13:56:51 UTC
Please file separate bugs for separate issues.  Reusing bugs makes it very difficult to track resolution.