Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 187093
Every second reinstall fails on a ProLiant DL580 G2 (vgcreate fails for rootvg)
Last modified: 2014-08-06 06:50:58 EDT
Description of problem: As reported in https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=186599 every second reinstall fails on a ProLiant DL580 G2. It seems to have to do with the following commands in the kickstart file: clearpart --all clearpart --initlabel After a successful installation, a reinstall appears to fail on one of these commands, but on a second reinstall it overcomes this problem. So when doing multiple reinstalls on the same machine we always have it fail every other time. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3. Actual results: Expected results: Additional info:
Created attachment 126903 [details] Kickstart file that causes the behaviour on a ProLiant DL580 G2
How does it fail? Can you provide the anacdump.txt?
I don't have an anacdump.txt and the systems have been put in production a few days later. So I cannot help debugging.
I am also experiencing something similar on a HP DL585 G2 system with external disk trays. I am attaching my kickstart file also. I get a very long error message, the last few lines of which are: SystemError: pvcreate failed for <fsset PartitionDevice instance at 0x2a99015878> The system on which I am trying to run the kickstart already has VGs on both the internal disks and as well as on the external disk tray. The first time when the system was fresh (with no VGs on any disk) the kickstart worked fine. After that, I have run the same kickstart several times and have found that it failed exactly at the same point (while trying to create PVs). However, I have observed that if I comment out the line "text", the installer runs in graphical mode and works absolutely fine everytime. To me it looks like the clearpart --all clearpart --initlabel does not seem to function properly with cciss driver in text mode install. I am also attaching the anacdump.txt file for your reference. I can afford to keep the system out of production for a short time, so if you need any more information, please get back.
Created attachment 129054 [details] Kickstart file on DL585 G2 which fails on system with existing VGs This is the kickstart file which fails when the DL585 G2 system using cciss driver already has VGs on it. It looks like clearpart --all --initlabel is not clearing the partitions.
Created attachment 129055 [details] Anaconda dump file for the kickstart which failed on DL585 G2 This is the anaconda dump file when the installation failed.
This is coming out to be a surprise now, The second install when I commented out the line "text" in kickstart file, the installation successed. Third installation, it is not working. Same message which appears in text mode kickstart is now appearing in graphics mode install and at the same place. I had tried doing dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/cciss/c0d0 bs=512 count=1 dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/cciss/c1d[0-4] bs=512 count=1 This should have removed any LVM signatures from the array. But still the same result. Now I am stuck, both text and gui kickstart modes dont work. Can this be looked into priority mode.
Ok, I think I have now understood what's the problem. I rebuild the RAID by revisiting the BIOS utilities. First I did it with the internal disks based on SmartArray 5i, but the kickstart still failed while trying to create a PV. Next I rebuild the RAID on both SmartArray 5i and SmartArray 6400 and the installation worked like a charm.
This bug is filed against RHEL 3, which is in maintenance phase. During the maintenance phase, only security errata and select mission critical bug fixes will be released for enterprise products. Since this bug does not meet that criteria, it is now being closed. For more information of the RHEL errata support policy, please visit: http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/errata/ If you feel this bug is indeed mission critical, please contact your support representative. You may be asked to provide detailed information on how this bug is affecting you.
This bug EXISTS in RHEL5.3. I find though that I can't reinstall an exisitng system via kickstart if the original had LVM. I have to manually blow the partition tbale top smitherines. dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M count=1000 ; sync ; reboot then kickstart again and all is well and the installation proceeds normally.. kickstart config used for partitioning the disks zerombr yes clearpart --initlabel --drives=sda --all part /boot --fstype ext3 --size=200 part pv.2 --size=0 --grow --ondisk=sda volgroup VolGroup00 --pesize=32768 pv.2 logvol / --fstype ext3 --name=LogVol00 --vgname=VolGroup00 --size=1024 --grow logvol swap --fstype swap --name=LogVol01 --vgname=VolGroup00 --size=1000 --grow --maxsize=1984