Bug 2041094 - boot vm from pxe fails: dracut: FATAL: iscsiroot requested but kernel/initrd does not support iscsi
Summary: boot vm from pxe fails: dracut: FATAL: iscsiroot requested but kernel/initrd ...
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9
Classification: Red Hat
Component: dracut
Version: CentOS Stream
Hardware: Unspecified
OS: Unspecified
unspecified
unspecified
Target Milestone: rc
: ---
Assignee: Lukáš Nykrýn
QA Contact: qe-baseos-daemons
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2022-01-15 22:49 UTC by Matthew Davis
Modified: 2022-01-20 13:32 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: If docs needed, set a value
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Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2022-01-20 13:32:35 UTC
Type: Bug
Target Upstream Version:


Attachments (Terms of Use)
Console of failed boot (36.77 KB, text/plain)
2022-01-15 22:49 UTC, Matthew Davis
no flags Details
Console log of Work-Around and Successful boot (269.79 KB, text/plain)
2022-01-15 22:50 UTC, Matthew Davis
no flags Details


Links
System ID Private Priority Status Summary Last Updated
Red Hat Issue Tracker RHELPLAN-108239 0 None None None 2022-01-15 22:53:09 UTC

Description Matthew Davis 2022-01-15 22:49:37 UTC
Created attachment 1851040 [details]
Console of failed boot

Description of problem:
When installing el9 on a VirtualBox guest with an new vmdk files as the storage, the boot will fail with the error:

dracut: FATAL: iscsiroot requested but kernel/initrd does not support iscsi

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


How reproducible:
This consistently reproducible with implementing a work around. 

Steps to Reproduce:
1. VirtualBox 6.1.30 (Windows host)
2. Create a new Linux VM.
3. Create a new VMDK file as the disk device.
4. Boot the guest using PXE.

Actual results:
Kernel and initrd loads however the boot fails/stops with:

dracut: FATAL: iscsiroot requested but kernel/initrd does not support iscsi

Expected results:
Boot succeeds and ANACONDA start the installation.

Additional info:

If I install CentOS 8 on the guest/vmdk file and then reinstall with EL9, the installation succeeds.

I am attaching 2 console logs.  One is the initial attempt that fails.  The second contains the El8 then EL9 work-around for comparison.

Comment 1 Matthew Davis 2022-01-15 22:50:49 UTC
Created attachment 1851041 [details]
Console log of Work-Around and Successful boot

Comment 2 David Tardon 2022-01-20 13:32:35 UTC
(In reply to Matthew Davis from comment #0)
> Description of problem:
> When installing el9 on a VirtualBox guest with an new vmdk files as the storage, the boot will fail with the error:

> dracut: FATAL: iscsiroot requested but kernel/initrd does not support iscsi

So, this error happens because probing for iSCSI--more specifically, "modprobe -n -q iscsi_tcp" command--failed, but it's not the first thing that fails. Looking at the logs, I see

[    5.506468] systemd[1]: systemd-modules-load.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
[    5.509940] systemd[1]: systemd-modules-load.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
[    5.514048] systemd[1]: Failed to start Load Kernel Modules.

, which suggests something is wrong with loading kernel modules in general. And even before that

[    5.460372] systemd[1]: Condition check resulted in Create List of Static Device Nodes being skipped.

, which again points to some problem with kernel (it doesn't happen in the "functional" scenario, of course). The kmod-static-nodes.service is conditionalized on two things: having CAP_SYS_MODULE capability and /lib/modules/<kernel-version>/modules.devname not being empty. But the service is running as root, which means it's the non-empty file condition that failed.

> If I install CentOS 8 on the guest/vmdk file and then reinstall with EL9,
> the installation succeeds.

IOW, it works fine if the target disk is not empty. I'm pretty sure this is a bug in VirtualBox. It's certainly not a bug in dracut, because dracut isn't even aware of that disk--it's running from the installation initramfs. It could be a kernel bug, but I sincerely doubt any problem with a storage device could mess up kernel this seriously. Closing hence.


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