From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 Galeon/1.2.5 (X11; Linux i686; U;) Gecko/20020606 Description of problem: KickStart gets IP, partitions, installs pkgs fine - then hangs at Postinstall. Alt-F4 reports: <6>attempt to access beyond end of device ... <4>Error -3 while decompressing. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Use attached ks.cfg file 2. Attempt to install 3. Watch Alt-F4 output, until Postinstall. Actual Results: Postinstall hangs halfway through and reports: <6>attempt to access beyond end of device <6>01:01: rw=0, want=4846, limit=4608 <4>Error -3 while decompressing. <4>c02a4a3c(669094144)->c5838000c4096) Expected Results: I believe KickStart should have installed correctly (it has worked flawlessly in the past on same machine with RH 7.2). Sorry if I am missing something obvious. :) Additional info: The machine in question is a Dell GX400 with a Western Digital 40 GB HDD (CHS: 4865/255/63 in dmesg). A similar ks.cfg worked fine on the same machine when installing RH 7.2. ks.cfg: auth --enablemd5 --enableshadow bootloader clearpart --linux firewall --disabled install url --url ftp://anonymous:@[SOME_SERVER]/pub/redhat-7.3 keyboard us lang en_US langsupport en_US mouse genericps/2 --device psaux --emulthree network --bootproto dhcp part /boot --fstype ext3 --size 20 part / --fstype ext3 --size 7000 --ondisk hda part swap --size 256 --ondisk hda reboot rootpw --iscrypted ..... text timezone --utc America/Chicago xconfig --depth 16 --resolution 1024x768 --defaultdesktop=GNOME --startxonboot %packages @Network Support
Is the machine completely unresponsive, or can you change VC's, etc?
It's not completely unresponsive. I can change VC's, but I believe when I went to the shell VC, I kept getting permission denied errors for the usual commands (ls, cd, etc.) I am going to use the same ks.cfg with RH 7.2 Monday to debug further.
Sorry for the delay. I have been able to install RH 7.2 (only) via KickStart on the Dell, but only with a / part size of 7 GB and a swap of 256 MB. I have tried larger / partitions but it failed. I have been unable to install RH 7.3 or RH 8.0: 7.3 throws a warning: "WARNING: Boot partition / may not meet booting constraints for your architecture. Creation of a boot disk is highly recommended." and hangs at the postinstall; 8.0 gives an error about being unable to retrieve the first install image. RH 7.2, 7.3, and 8.0 are able to install without error or snafu from the same FTP server when installed by hand (without KickStart). The machine (Dell GX400) is used in two labs of about 20-25 computers each. We used to install RH 7.2 in the labs with KickStart, but kept the / partition down to 5-6 GB (because the machines are NIS/NFS clients). Since then we have been using imaging software. This may just be a problem with this particular machine and might be related to the following KickStart Mailing List post: http://www.redhat.com/mailing-lists/kickstart-list/msg02579.html We will probably just solve the problem by installing RH 8.0 on a machine and imaging the rest of them, but if any more debugging might help, please do not hesitate to ask. Thanks for your help.
Are you passing the proper ramdisk_size option to the kernel when you are booting? (used by syslinux, but if you're booting with something other than our boot disks, you need to make sure it's specified)
I am using the default bootnet.img images. Using the ks.cfg and syslinux.cfg recommended in the Customization Guide.
So the syslinux.cfg is the same as the one on bootnet?
syslinux.cfg used is as follows: default ks prompt 0 timeout 600 label ks kernel vmlinuz append ks=floppy initrd=initrd.img
You need to add ramdisk_size=8192 to the append line.
Time tracking values updated
Adding ramdisk_size=9216 (for RH8) works fine, I imagine that defining the size will work similarly for RH7.2 and RH7.3. Sorry for the delay (busy semester), but thank you very much for your help. You people rock. Happy Holidays! -mgb