Re: Questions about loader and other early anaconda startup stuffs

[Matthew Richards <Matthew Richards contentkeeper com>]

Hi Alex,

I am in the process of re-spinning CentOS 5.2 and have experienced the same 
symptoms as you, i.e. "note that if you go through the prompts, select "Local 
CDROM" for the installation type, and force it to load the "usb-storage" 
driver, it will continue". As you have suggested, this does not fit in with the 
whole unattended install paradigm :-)

My solution was to include my kickstart file(s) in the initrd image that is 
loaded by the bootloader upon startup. This has the advantage of making the 
kickstart file(s) available to Anaconda without requiring the CD/DVD to be 
mounted at the time.

I assume that in order to automate selection of the kickstart file you have 
customised your bootloader (ISOLinux) config and added an argument to the 
append option similar to "ks=cdrom:/ks.cfg".

You will need to change this to let Anaconda know where to find the kickstart 
file once you have added it to the initrd image. I suggest you add your 
kickstart file(s) to the /tmp directory in the initrd. The corresponding 
bootloader option will be "ks=file:/tmp/ks.cfg". Check the Advanced 
Installation and Deployment section of the RedHat Installation Guide for a 
complete list of ks= arguments.

How you actually add the kickstart files to the initrd image depends upon how 
the initrd image is crafted in CentOS 4.7 and how you are re-spinning your DVD. 
I choose to manually extract, modify and repackage the initrd image rather than 
using Anaconda buildinstall, although I plan to move over in the future. The 
process I use is is based upon the one used in buildinstall anyway:

(The initrd.img exists in the /isolinux directory of DVD)

# Preparations

cp ks.cfg /tmp/
cp initrd.img /tmp/
cd /tmp
mkdir /tmp/initrd

# Extract Initrd

gzip -dc initrd.img | ( cd /tmp/initrd ; cpio -idumv )

# Make my customisations

cp /tmp/ks.cfg /tmp/initrd/tmp/

# Rebuild initrd

cd /tmp
mv initrd.img old-initrd.img
( cd /tmp/initrd ; find . | cpio -ovc ) | gzip -9 > initrd.img

... now just copy the new initrd image /tmp/initrd.img back to your buildtree 
and rebuild your DVD ISO image.

If you have any problems you should be able to verify the correct CPIO options 
and exact initrd build procedure by installing anaconda-runtime and going 
through the /usr/lib/anaconda-runtime/buildinstall script.

Hope this helps.

Matt