Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 52969
Kickstart install will not make partitions
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:36:47 EDT
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.3) Gecko/20010802 Description of problem: Using Dell Precision 420 workstation with an IDE hard drive, but has an unused SCSI controller onboard. Machine performed a 7.2beta network install without a problem. Now, using a kickstart file on a bootnet floppy , system cannot make partitions. Here is the top portion of the file: ### Start kickstart file snippet ### lang en_US network --bootproto dhcp url --url ftp://porkchop.redhat.com/mnt/test/roswell2-i386/i386 keyboard "us" zerombr yes clearpart --linux part swap --size 256 part /boot --size 32 part / --grow install ### End kickstart file snippet ### The install runs smoothly until it goes to create the partitions. The main console comes up with this error: ### Begin Error Message ### Error Partitioning: Could not allocate requested partitions: Partitioning failed: Could not allocate partitions. Press OK to reboot your system. ### End Error Message ### There are no hard drive errors in console 3 or console 4. I could switch to the F2 console, and create the partitions manually using fdisk without errors. The "clearpart" command appears to be working, as I can create partitions on the drive, then when the system reboots anmd the kickstart is run, the partitons are cleared from the drive. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Utilize above kickstart file via floppy 2. Boot system, and issue the "linux ks=floppy" command at the boot prompt 3. Wait for the crap to happen ;) Actual Results: The error listed in the description happened. Expected Results: The install should have created the partitions and continued the install. Additional info: I'm listing this as high severity, as it may indicate a problem with all kickstarts. I will be testing this on a box without a SCSI controller, and will let you know the results.
I'm seeing a similar problem with kickstarting computers with compaq smartraid controllers (cpqarray). Installation works great, but when kickstarting - the installer won't find the disks to place the partition on. You have to specify --ondisk ida/c0d0 (or something like that) before the installer finds the disks. This situation also existed in rh7.1 The problem, atleast mine, has something to do with the naming of the devices, like /dev/ida/c0d0p1. This problem would also affect all others using such a scheme.
The first problem is because there wasn't a size specified for the partition. I've added a little bit more diagnostic error checking to make it more clear what the problem is in this case. The second problem with smartarray controllers sounds different and should work -- could you please confirm that it doesn't work with the most recent Roswell release and if not, open a separate bug report.