Kickstart via ks=hd not working

[Kyle Powell]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Phil Oester wrote:
> When using ks=hd: on the command line, I get an error that the ks.cfg
> file can't be found, but if I hit enter on the same path, it works the
> second time.  It seems to be due to the scsi drives not yet being ready
> when kickstart first looks for the file.
> 
>>From the logs:
> 
> 17:03:35 DEBUG   : probing buses
> 17:03:35 DEBUG   : waiting for hardware to initialize
> 17:03:37 INFO    : getting kickstart file
> 17:03:37 INFO    : getting kickstart file from harddrive
> 17:03:37 INFO    : Loading ks from device sda1 on path /ks/ks.cfg
> 17:03:37 INFO    : getFileFromBlockDevice(sda1, /ks/ks.cfg)
> 17:03:37 ERROR   : failed to mount /dev/sda1: No such file or directory
> <hit enter here, then it succeeds>
> 17:05:56 INFO    : getting kickstart file from harddrive
> 17:05:56 INFO    : Loading ks from device sda1 on path /ks/ks.cfg
> 17:05:56 INFO    : getFileFromBlockDevice(sda1, /ks/ks.cfg)
> 17:05:56 INFO    : Searching for file on path /tmp/mnt//ks/ks.cfg
> 17:05:56 INFO    : file copied to /tmp/ks.cfg
> 
> Any ideas?  Some need for scsi_wait_scan here perhaps?
> 
> Phil

Looks like a bug, but not necessarily in anaconda. Shouldn't the drive be ready
before POST completes? Perhaps you have a BIOS option enabled that tells POST to
complete even though the drive isn't ready (fast POST or something like that)?
I'm unable to duplicate this on my hardware. I don't know of any parameters that
would tell anaconda to wait. The only thing I can think of is passing multiple
(MANY!) duplicate ks parameters. Anaconda will try them all (well, I've only
tried it with < 4 so there may be a limit, and I've never tried passing multiple
ks parameters with the same value either). So you could try:

ks=hd:sda1:/ks/ks.cfg ks=hd:sda1:/ks/ks.cfg ... ks=hd:sda1:/ks/ks.cfg

and see if the drive becomes ready before anaconda reaches the end of the list.
I know that's far from elegant, but it's the best I can come up with.
- --
Kyle Powell | Red Hat | Senior Consultant, RHCE
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFJSWF/7pTtanQdBU4RAh30AKCOMvDP8rN8dex5EtKBBTPsXGVbSACfWvtl
Xm1Nz41iCO1g1l/ynTzUdnc=
=UVuy
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----