While trying to kickstart a machine using the 7.0 (boxed, RedHat Professional Server) CDROM I get the following messages during the installation of the "dev" package: ---------- cut ---------- Install exited abnormally -- received signal 9 sending termination signals...done sending kill signals...done disableing swap... unmounting filesystems... /mnt/sysimage/boot /mnt/sysimage/proc /proc/bus/usb /mnt/sysimage /mnt/runtime /mnt/source umount failed (16) /dev/pts /proc you may safely reboot your system ---------- cut ---------- I am using the following boot command: linux updates ks=floppy and using a floppy with the following ks.cfg file: ---------- cut ---------- lang en_US cdrom keyboard us lilo --location mbr part /boot --onpart hda2 part swap --onpart hda3 part / --onpart hda5 mouse none timezone US/Pacific rootpw xxxxxx auth --enablemd5 --useshadow %packages @ Network Server ---------- cut ---------- I am also using the anaconda update that is available for 7.0. The machine I am installing on has the following pre-existing partition table: ---------- cut ---------- major minor #blocks name rio rmerge rsect ruse wio wmerge wsect wuse running use aveq 3 0 9965592 hda 41 0 268 340 6 0 42 0 0 340 340 3 1 4096543 hda1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 2 16065 hda2 7 0 14 20 1 0 2 0 0 20 20 3 3 64260 hda3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 4 1 hda4 1 0 2 20 0 0 0 0 0 20 20 3 5 1020096 hda5 32 0 250 290 5 0 40 0 0 290 290 22 0 654848 hdc 148 1547 6774 8570 0 0 0 0 -17 289510 -4903770 ---------- cut ---------- and the install.log from the target machine although it is not at all surprising: ---------- cut ---------- Installing setup. Installing filesystem. Installing basesystem. Installing glibc. Installing chkconfig. Installing mktemp. Installing termcap. Installing libtermcap. Installing bash. Installing anacron. Installing apmd. Installing ncurses. Installing info. Installing fileutils. Installing grep. Installing ash. Installing at. Installing authconfig. Installing bc. Installing bdflush. Installing bind-utils. Installing bzip2. Installing sed. Installing mingetty. Installing gawk. Installing e2fsprogs. Installing procps. Installing popt. Installing logrotate. Installing sysklogd. Installing psmisc. Installing which. Installing vixie-cron. Installing modutils. Installing shadow-utils. Installing initscripts. Installing textutils. Installing XFree86-libs. Installing zlib. Installing XFree86-xfs. Installing cracklib. Installing words. Installing cracklib-dicts. Installing pwdb. Installing db3. Installing glib. Installing pam. Installing SysVinit. Installing chkfontpath. Installing console-tools. Installing cpio. Installing crontabs. Installing cyrus-sasl. Installing db1. Installing db2. Installing dev. ---------- cut ---------- Any ideas? b.
Most likely, the install kernel oopsed; that's pretty much the only way the installer gets SIGKILL.
Hmmmm. There was no evidence of an oops on any of the VCs. What now?
Passing to QA to reproduce.
I don't mean to push, but any idea how long QA will take to reproduce? I only ask because I need to decide whether I can sit tight and wait or if I need to figure something else out. If you have any suggestions at all that I can do to help out please just let me know.
hmmm ... this seems likely to be hardware specific, as I cannot reproduce the problem in our test lab using generic equipment ... what hardware do you have in your system ...?
Bah! I hate that. The exact details of the machine can be found at http://www.e4me.com/infocentral/product_etower600is.html minus the [win]modem and add at least one Linksys LNE100TX, details at: http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?prid=31&grid=10 Mine are the version 4.1 cards, needing the updated tulip.o driver package from Donald Becker's netdriver package.
unfortunately, we do not have this specific hardware in our test lab ... we have not seen this problem with similar class machines in our lab ... :( also, I have almost this machine @ home (a 500 Mhz celeron emachines for personal use), and though I've not done a kickstart install onto it, I've not had any other problems with installing Red Hat Linux 7 onto it ... do you also have this problem with an interactive (ie non-kickstart) install ...? Have you seen this problem occur similarly on different hardware ...? (I am wondering if this incident is not a single possibly faulty machine)
No, an interactive install works just fine. I suspect that there is something about my kickstart recipie that is causing the barfage. Actually I think likely it has something to do with the part where I have the disk pre-partitioned and tell the kickstart what to do with those partitions rather than letting kickstart create them. What do you think of that hypothesis?
Could you try having the installer allocate one of the partitions and see if it helps?
But if the machine I am installing to has other OS(es) on it, along with some paritions that I want the installer to install into, how will it know not to write into the partitions of the other OS(es)?
I solved it!! The problem is simply one of not enough memory. The machine I am installing onto only has 32MB of memory. You could not really have installed onto the same class of machine (memory plays heavily into replicating a "class" of machine IMHO) as you say above or you would have come across the same problem wouldn't you have? Anyway, I added a 128MB stick of memory and the install went fine. This seems to be only a Kickstart issue and not a general installer issue. Why? Because when used interactively, the installer notices that the amount of memory is low and requests that swap be mounted immediately to compensate. It would seem that the installer does not do the same during a kickstart. It should, no? Why not if you think it shouldn't?
Is anything going to be done with the additional information I have provided? I have worked around the damn problem! Some acknowlegement of what permanent fixes will be put in place would be nice.
For your original case you had 32M of RAM and 64M of swap?
Yes, 32MB of memory, 64MB swap.
> The problem is simply one of not enough memory. The machine I am installing > onto only has 32MB of memory. You could not really have installed onto the > same class of machine (memory plays heavily into replicating a "class" of > machine IMHO) as you say above or you would have come across the same problem > wouldn't you have? You're right. I had more memory in the system (64 Mb) ... We are working to have more efficient resource usages in future releases of anaconda ...
Don't be so quick to close the bug. :-) The interactive mode of the installer deals with this issue by mounting the swap partition very early in the install if it detects a low memory configuration. Why not have the kickstart mode of the installer do the same?
Kickstart was designed for use on server machines primarily, which always have enough RAM to work. We do not plan to change this behavior at this time.