Bug 988428

+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #917334 +++

Description of problem:
File preservation does not work while re-provisioning system from RHEL 5 system to RHEL 6 . 

When we try to re-provision RHEL 5 system with RHEL 6 kickstart proflie , which has file preservation enabled. Files are preserved but they are not restored back after completion of RHEL 6 installation. 


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
RHN Satellite v 5.5
RHEL 5 - RHEL 6 

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create RHEL 6 kickstart profile with file preservation enabled 
2. Take any RHEL 5 system which is registered to RHN Satellite v 5.5 and have Provisioning entitlement assigned. 
3. Re-provistion RHEL 5 system with same kickstart profile 
  
Actual results:

After RHEL 6 system installation , preserved files from RHEL 5 system are missing on filesystem. 

Expected results:

Preserved files should be present on RHEL 6 system after re-provisioning from RHEL 5 system. 

Additional info:

--- Additional comment from Stephen Herr on 2013-07-24 17:36:16 EDT ---

This is due to RHEL 6.2 and onwards using LZMA compression for the initrd.img instead of gzip compression. The workaround for this is to simply kickstart to RHEL 6.1 instead, and then do a 'yum update' go get on the latest packages. Alternately you can kickstart to 6.1 and then kickstart to 6.latest.

--- Additional comment from Stephen Herr on 2013-07-25 11:00:43 EDT ---

A better workaround is to install the "xz" package on the RHEL 5 system before attempting the kickstart to RHEL 6. This is really the heart of the bug; that xz is not installed by default on RHEL 5 (it is in RHEL 6) and the spacewalk-koan package does not properly depend on it.