Problem booting from PXE/kickstart on FC7

[Mike Wright]

Gary Schlachter wrote:
> 
> 
> Mike Wright wrote:
> 
>> Gary Schlachter wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Mike Wright wrote:
>>>
>>>> Gary Schlachter wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>    I am trying to use PXE/kickstart to load FC7 on an appliance.  
>>>>> My initrd.img and vmlinuz are from FC7 and are loading but my 
>>>>> console output looks like the following:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> <big snip />
>>>>
>>>>> Switching to new root and running init.
>>>>> umounting old /dev
>>>>> umounting old /proc
>>>>> umounting old /sys
>>>>> switchroot: mount failed: No such file or directory
>>>>> Booting has failed.
>>>>> Kernel panic - not syncing:  Attempted to kill init!
>>>>>
>>>>> Any and all thoughts would be greatly appreciated!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hi Gary,
>>>>
>>>> I'll take a stab at it.
>>>>
>>>> I nfs install f7 using pxeboot and kickstart.  I seem to remember 
>>>> struggling with something similar.  It turned out that in the 
>>>> pxeboot stanza I had broken the APPEND line using "\".  Big no-no.  
>>>> The "\" is for readability.  The APPEND line and all its options 
>>>> must be on a single line.  Once I'd done that it worked correctly.
>>>>
>>>> If that doesn't solve the problem would you post your pxeboot 
>>>> stanza? Might be a clue there.
>>>>
>>>> hth,
>>>> Mike Wright :m)
>>>>
>>> I finally got my initrd.img to load.  I found a post about changing 
>>> the init script in the initrd.img from
>>>
>>>    mount /sysroot
>>>
>>>       to
>>>
>>>    mount -o defaults --ro -t ext3 /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /sysroot
>>>
>>> and that did the trick.  However now my kickstart file is not being 
>>> used.  My pxelinux.xfg/default looks like
>>>
>>>       label linux
>>>       kernel vmlinuz
>>>       append initrd=initrd.fc7.img 
>>> ks=nfs:10.254.13.1:/home/tftpboot/kickstart/10.254.13.112-kickstart 
>>> ramdisk_size=9216
>>>
>>> I have tried with and without the ksdevice=eth0 on the "append" line 
>>> as well.  It is like the "ks=" is being ignored by the kernel alotugh 
>>> I can see it as a kernel option on the console.
>>
>>
>> Hmmm, couple possibilities:
>>
>> Is the nfs server running and has the kickstart file been exported?  
>> Is that machine running iptables and are the required nfs ports open?
>>
>> When I was trying to debug my setup tcpdump was definitely my best 
>> friend.
>>
> 
> Yes to all since I am able to boot other systems with FC1 from the same 
> setup.  My PXE prompt has multiple options one of which is Fedora Core 1 
> and another is Fedora Core 7.
> 

Our APPEND lines are very different.  Here's mine:

APPEND ksdevice=eth0 load_ramdisk=1 initrd=images/fc7-install.img 
network ks=nfs:lan51:/opt/fc7/ks.cfg