How to PXE kickstart hosts with little memory (Error: "Warning: /dev/root does not exist")?
Hi,
while kickstarting our virtual machines with PXE we often run into kickstart/anaconda failing with
[...] [...] dracut-mount[xxx]: Warning: Can't mount root filesystem [...] dracut-mount[xxx]: Warning: /dev/root does not exist [...] dracut-mount[xxx]:/lib/dracut-lib.sh: line 1030: echo write error: No space left on device Starting Dracut Emergency Shell... Warning: /dev/root does not exist
Generating "/run/initramfs/rsdosreport.txt"
[...]
It seems, that this is not related to local disk space - as I initally thought - but to too small memory. It only happens with VMs with little RAM (1024 MB). As soon as we raise the available memory to 2048 MB, kickstarting works fine. The RHEL 7 installation guide states, that the minimal memory requirement is 1 GB, so the network installation /should/ work.
Is there a way to install such hosts w/o having to temporarily raise the available memory?
Cheers frank
On 04/21/2017 12:49 PM, Frank Thommen wrote:
It seems, that this is not related to local disk space - as I initally thought - but to too small memory. It only happens with VMs with little RAM (1024 MB). As soon as we raise the available memory to 2048 MB, kickstarting works fine. The RHEL 7 installation guide states, that the minimal memory requirement is 1 GB, so the network installation /should/ work.
Yeah, I filed a bug report against the documentation some time ago.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1410948
...though bugzilla is currently down.
Is there a way to install such hosts w/o having to temporarily raise the available memory?
None that I'm aware of, as of 7.3. If you have a 7.2 install tree, you can boot the older installer and then update the installed system. Seems easier to boost the memory, typically.
On 04/21/2017 10:25 PM, Gordon Messmer wrote:
On 04/21/2017 12:49 PM, Frank Thommen wrote:
It seems, that this is not related to local disk space - as I initally thought - but to too small memory. It only happens with VMs with little RAM (1024 MB). As soon as we raise the available memory to 2048 MB, kickstarting works fine. The RHEL 7 installation guide states, that the minimal memory requirement is 1 GB, so the network installation /should/ work.
Yeah, I filed a bug report against the documentation some time ago.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1410948
...though bugzilla is currently down.
Is there a way to install such hosts w/o having to temporarily raise the available memory?
None that I'm aware of, as of 7.3. If you have a 7.2 install tree, you can boot the older installer and then update the installed system. Seems easier to boost the memory, typically.
I gave it a try with 7.2.1511 and that works fine as long as I have "ip=eth0:dhcp" in my PXE config. As soon as I expand it to "ip=eth0:dhcp ip=eno1:dhcp rd.neednet=1" (I do that to make sure kickstart works independently from the name of the network interface), kickstart enters into emergency mode w/o any error message after a lot of timeout warnings. However that's something we can work around.
Thanks for the 7.2 hint.
frank
-
Frank Thommen -
Gordon Messmer