Bug 431508 - anaconda selects impossible runlevel for initdefault during kickstart
Summary: anaconda selects impossible runlevel for initdefault during kickstart
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: anaconda
Version: rawhide
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
low
low
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Chris Lumens
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2008-02-05 06:00 UTC by Jon Stanley
Modified: 2008-02-05 16:05 UTC (History)
0 users

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2008-02-05 16:05:09 UTC
Type: ---
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)
kickstart file (1.06 KB, text/plain)
2008-02-05 06:00 UTC, Jon Stanley
no flags Details

Description Jon Stanley 2008-02-05 06:00:17 UTC
Description of problem:

With the attached ks.cfg file (used to test kickstart support for encrypted
partitions - which works beautifully BTW), runlevel 5 was the initdefault for
the resulting system, even though no windowing system was installed.  Therefore,
you get a :id x respawning too fast, disabled for 5 minutes" message.


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

anaconda-11.4.0.30-1

How reproducible:

Didn't try, presume every time :)

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Kickstart using attached file

Actual results:

Runlevel 5 selected as initdefault, which doesn't work.

Expected results:

Runlevel 3 selected as initdefault.

Comment 1 Jon Stanley 2008-02-05 06:00:17 UTC
Created attachment 293970 [details]
kickstart file

Comment 2 Jon Stanley 2008-02-05 06:12:57 UTC
/hmmm, just noticed invalid stuff in there, like:

xconfig --startxonboot

and the --append for the bootloader (I copied this ks.cfg from what anaconda
deposited in /root/anaconda-ks.cfg and must not have looked at it too closely).

Retrying with a more sane set of options (and --nobase to speed things up) and
will report back.  I still don't think that it should have set the runlevel to 5
with no chance of it working, but some of this could likely be chalked up to
PEBCAK. :)

Comment 3 Jon Stanley 2008-02-05 06:38:43 UTC
Yeah, sane options got this working right.  I'm gonna leave this open, but I'm
not sure how to proceed - on one hand, anaconda did exactly what I told it to. 
On the other hand, what I told it to do was impossible to ever work.  Should
there be some sort of error checking for these cases??

Comment 4 Jeremy Katz 2008-02-05 13:29:29 UTC
In general, we take the approach of "do what is asked for, even if it seems
nonsensical" with kickstart.  I'm not really sure what (reasonable) checking we
can do as you could be doing installs of lots of different things which would
have different meanings of the *dm used in runlevel 5.

Comment 5 Chris Lumens 2008-02-05 16:05:09 UTC
No, there's really nothing we can do here besides log some sort of warning
message for later.  It's entirely possible to run anaconda in text mode, but
want to install and use X on the installed system.  We won't be able to tell
this until much later on, as we'll have to inspect the display mode requested
and the package selections made.  At this point, I feel that too complicated of
a scheme is just bound to failure and won't ever really do what we want anyway.

In short, kickstart makes impossible things possible.  :)


Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.