Description of problem: We're trying to get a kickstart install going with a boot cd, install tree available through NFS. We have some hardware that doesn't work automatically in RHEL 3 (an Adaptec AIC-9410 using the adp94xx driver). It comes with a driver disk image, so we have attempted to use this with the kickstart install. When booting off of the CD, we use the following boot parameters (from isolinux.cfg): kernel linuzas append initrd=initrdas.img ks=nfs:(server):/home/kickstart/rhel3_as.ks ksdevice=eth0 The rhel3_as.ks file has the following driverdisk line: driverdisk --source=nfs:(server):/home/kickstart/dist/adp94xx-0.0.5-7.rhel3qu4.i686.img We have also tried distributing the file through http: driverdisk --source=http://(server)~kloostec/adp94xx-0.0.5-7.rhel3qu4.i686.img The problem is that the installer cannot mount the image file using either NFS or HTTP distribution. I can mount it file on my FC4 machine, it's just in the RHEL installer. It copies the file to /tmp/dd.img just fine; the problem is something to do with "cannot assign a loopback device" when it actually tries to mount the disk to /tmp/drivers. It appears to be trying to use /tmp/loop6. I checked /tmp and loop6 is there, with the proper node and subnode. Is there any way around this problem, or can it be fixed? Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): RHEL 3.0 update 4 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Set up a kickstart with installation over NFS 2. Set up a driverdisk line, and distribute the image over NFS, too 3. Boot up the kickstart installation Actual results: Cannot mount driverdisk. Expected results: Drivers extracted from the driverdisk image, hard drives detected, install to continue painlessly.
Note: this is RHEL3 U4, as that's the latest version of the kernel driver that we can get for the hardware. The exact error is: * mntloop loop6 on /tmp/drivers as /tmp/dd.img fd is 36 * failed to mount loop: Invalid argument
This seems to be the same bug as Bug 127072, but that bug was apparently fixed a year ago. Confirmed that the same fix (creating an ext2 disk image) fixes the problem.
For RHEL3, you need to use ext2 formatted driver disks in this case. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 127072 ***