Description of problem: Customized version of ES 4 installer dies under certain circumstances during kickstart after PXE Boot and after disk formatting segment of kickstart script. Specifically, I had added two sun jdk rpm's to my installer, and reran the necessary scripts (genhdlist/pkgorder/genhdlist). Sun mis-named their java rpm's and it caused the installer to blow up with only "WARNING: not all packages in hdlist had order tag" on other virtual console. I _did_ get a warning after running genhdlist the 2nd time: WARNING: ordering not found for jdk-1_5_0_02-linux-i586.rpm But maybe there could have been a better error message their, or a pointer towards how to reolve issues like this? Specifically, I'm just looking for a better error message here -- like even "file XXX for package XXX not found" or something of that nature during kickstart. Sun should have known better, but it would have saved me the better part of a day if the error message was more accurate/verbose. All I had to do to make the installer work was rename the rpm's from jdk-1_5_0_02-linux-i586.rpm to jdk-1.5.0_02-fcs.i586.rpm following the proper conventions, but it took an outside pair of eyes after much hassle to figure this out. Also, the rpms install fine using rpm -i on a live system. Only Anaconda doesn't like them. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): anaconda-10.1.1.13-1 How reproducible: Every time. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Download sun java rpm (any of them it seems). 2. Put in your RedHat/RPMS dir in your build path. 3. Run genhdlist/pkgorder/genhdlist with appropriate switches. 4. Add java to your package list in a kickstart script. 5. Kickstart server against your ks script. Actual results: Implosion happens right after partitioning segment of install. Expected results: Genhdlist or Anaconda to provide better error message to point out rpm misnaming. Additional info: Sun should know better, but if this process were documented a little better it would have saved me a lot of time.
I think this is a name != nvr issue rpm --qf '%{name}-%{version}-%{release}.%{arch}.rpm\n' -qp jdk-1_5_0_02-linux-i586.rpm My personal suggestion would be to use the jpackage nosrc.rpm to build the sun rpms from the binary installer (non-rpm). RHEL 4 and Fedora java/gcj are designed to be compatible with JPackage standards, so this would allow you to switch jdks using alternatives with ones provided via RHAPS or the RHEL Extras http://jpackage.org/rpm.php?id=2546 http://jpackage.org/faq.php http://jpackage.org/rebuilding.php
The problem is that you can get the error for a variety of reasons and the naming being wrong is just the tip of the iceberg. Things get handled a little bit better in the devel tree, though.
So are nicer error messages out of the question then, for Anaconda? This seems like a pretty worthy issue to resolve, especially since Anaconda is not very well documented, imho. This is/was a "name != nvr issue".