Redhat Ent Linux 4 installation using kickstart on HP BL40 servers

[CA1367359]

Hi,

We have HP BL20, BL40P servers , I am unable to install RHEL AS 4.0 Update 2 using Kickstart. I tried all options, nfs, http, virtual floppy... nothing looks working. Just fyi, My server has 4 nic cards.

The installation was never able to see any of these (floppy, nfs or http).

Any ideas to help please?

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom CA,

The common thread here is probably network connectivity. If none of the installation techiques worked, either the blade complex is not connected to the network or you are not using the correct network settings when prompted by kickstart.

SEP

[Sung Oh]

Hello,

I am not sure which stage you are currently in. does it PXE boot? and failed to copy over the kickstart configuration file?

if you were able to PXE boot via network and it fail, you could look under kickstart configuration file for "eth0"

since you are not aware of the which network device you are using for network installation, you can configure the kickstart configuration to search for a network device that you can talk to.

I hope this helps,

Sung

[CA1367359]

Hi,

thanks for the replies. I am able to make little progress here. Out of NIC devices, only eth1 was receiving the dhcp address and its working. NFS has some issues, how can I use ftp for kickstart?

any ideas please....

[Manuel Wolfshant]

I have not completely understood your messages (that is, the steps you have tried/succeeded to perform), so here are two methods. First one requires that you have control over the ftp server, second one does not.
a) first method:
Since you say eth1 is operational, you should follow the following steps (I will assume the ftp server has IP=1.2.3.4)
1 make sure the kickstart file contains a line similar to:
url --url ftp://ftp:anonymous@1.2.3.4/path/to/RHEL
and also:
network --device eth1 --bootproto dhcp
(you will of course need to provide the real IP of the ftp server and the path to the RHEL repository..)
2 place the kickstart file somewhere on the ftp server, so that it can be retrieved by anaconda. For simplicity let's say the file's name is ks.cfg and you have placed it in the root of the RHEL repository
3 after the system boots, when prompted by the install disk, type the following
linux ks=ftp://1.2.3.4/ks.cfg
From now on, it should go as instructed by the ks.cfg file

If you cannot place the ks.cfg on the ftp server, you can skip the url part from step 1 above. Also, instead of step 2, place your initial ks.cfg file in the floppy drive, boot from the install CD and type
linux ks=floppy:ks.cfg

If none of the above works, please post more details about what you have tried and what step is failing.

[Andrew Cowan]

Is the install failing because you need a RAID or a customised Ethernet device driver? It could be that the reason the Ethernet is not working is that it does not see it at that stage of the boot?

If this is the case you need to make a Kickstart floppy that also contains the RAID/Ethernet drivers.

[CA1367359]

All - Thank you very much for the replies. I was of some luck with kickstart, it works! but in a limited way.

- I had to turn off SAN devices( power off SAN switches), otherwise RHEL 4 installation installs Grub on the SAN partitions.

- Not clear which ethernet network works for the blades. I will initially try at boot: prompt
linux ks=nfs::/nfspath/kickstartfile ksdevice=eth0

If the above doesnt work, I try eth1 then eth2 or eth3.

Any clues to resolve these issues please?

Thank you again!.

[Andrew Cowan]

As I said in my previous post this could be caused because either the LAN adapters are being numbered differently because of the way the install program detects them, or because some adapters require drivers.