I've been using kickstart successfully with a local mirror going back to CentOS 4.X. I'm trying to install CentOS 5.3 via kickstart on a new system (which happens to be different than most other systems I've installed on), and the install process always hangs shortly after the partitions are created. If I go to the alternate console #3, the last two lines are always this (except that the time stamp changes every time I try it of course):
10:06:18 DEBUG: Member xorg-x11-drv-i128-1.2.0-4 - u 10:06:18 DEBUG: Adding Package xorg-x11-drv-i128-1.2.0-4.i386 in mode u
This is preceded by hundreds of similar lines for other packages, but it always hangs at xorg-x11-drv-i128-1.2.0-4. I am currently out of other systems to test/install this on. Instead of the usual ThinkCentre mini tower, this system is a ThinkCentre pizza box. I've installed CentOS on this type of hardware before without problems, but it hangs on the only two systems I currently have.
It's possible that there is something wrong with my local mirror, but I rsync it every night and this problem has been going on for a few days. I will try to install this on a mini tower to rule out any hardware compatibility issues, but in the mean time, I'm looking for suggestions on how to debug this. I've booted into Linux rescue mode after power cycling the system after it hung to look at whatever did get installed, but there are no useful log files.
Alfred
Alfred von Campe wrote:
I've been using kickstart successfully with a local mirror going back to CentOS 4.X. I'm trying to install CentOS 5.3 via kickstart on a new system (which happens to be different than most other systems I've installed on), and the install process always hangs shortly after the partitions are created. If I go to the alternate console #3, the last two lines are always this (except that the time stamp changes every time I try it of course):
How long does it hang? CentOS 5.x takes much longer to get to the point where it is installing packages than 4.x, probably a good 3-4 minutes more, perhaps longer if your mirror is over a WAN connection, my mirror is on the local LAN and it does take a long time as well though it always has(CentOS 5.0,5.1,5.2, haven't tried 5.3).
Unless your waiting for hours for it to go I think what your seeing is "normal". I'd suggest using a mirror on your local network to see if it speeds anything up, but I think most of the time is spent on the client calculating the various things it needs for packages.
nate
How long does it hang? CentOS 5.x takes much longer to get to the point where it is installing packages than 4.x, probably a good 3-4 minutes more, perhaps longer if your mirror is over a WAN connection, my mirror is on the local LAN and it does take a long time as well though it always has(CentOS 5.0,5.1,5.2, haven't tried 5.3).
I waited overnight and it was still hung in the morning. My local mirror is on the LAN, so it's not a network issue.
I was able to find another system, and it appeared to hang at the same spot (that is, I was looking at alternate console #3 and saw that it stopped at the same RPM). However, after a couple of minutes it proceeded. My guess is that this RPM is the last one to download, and the kickstart process needs to "think" about the next step. While it was stuck at this step, anaconda was using close to 100% of the CPU according to top in console 2.
So it appears to be a resource problem on the smaller desktops. The specs are Pentium 4 @ 3.00GHz with 1.5GB of memory and integrated Intel 915G/915GV/910GL accelerated VGA graphics. This should be more than enough to install/run CentOS. I even tried installing in text mode and it also hung. Very strange...
Alfred
Alfred von Campe wrote:
I waited overnight and it was still hung in the morning. My local mirror is on the LAN, so it's not a network issue.
hmm, is your package selection particularly complex? In my case I list hundreds of packages in my %packages section I don't have groups and stuff. I assume your using a stock CentOS install and you didn't put any of your own 3rd party rpms in the installation and update the comps.xml(?) file to include them?
A P4 3Ghz is plenty to install CentOS, I install CentOS 5.2 at least on 2Ghz systems with 1GB or less ram(running in VMs), I do get about a 2-4 minute pause but nothing as severe as what you see.
I'm not sure what to suggest..if your packages selection is complex try simplifying it. I believe what is going on during that stage is it's calculating all of the dependencies and stuff.
I don't expect strace to be installed as part of the stage2 installer if it were it'd be interesting to know what exactly it's doing..
nate
On May 14, 2009, at 23:36, nate wrote:
hmm, is your package selection particularly complex? In my case I list hundreds of packages in my %packages section I don't have groups and stuff. I assume your using a stock CentOS install and you didn't put any of your own 3rd party rpms in the installation and update the comps.xml(?) file to include them?
No, it's not very complex (see below). I use a stock CentOS install for kickstart, but I do install some packages from the RPMforge repo during the post installation phase. I've been using this package list for years with some minor modifications:
%packages @ admin-tools @ authoring-and-publishing @ base @ base-x @ development-tools @ editors @ emacs @ engineering-and-scientific @ games @ gnome-desktop @ gnome-software-development @ graphical-internet @ graphics @ kde-desktop @ kde-software-development @ legacy-software-development @ office @ printing @ server-cfg @ smb-server @ sound-and-video @ system-tools @ text-internet @ web-server @ x-software-development -dmraid -yum-updatesd boost boost-devel dejagnu ElectricFence foomatic expect minicom mkisofs ncurses-devel openmotif system-config-boot system-config-kickstart system-switch-mail system-switch-mail-gnome vim-X11 wireshark-gnome
I'm not sure what to suggest..if your packages selection is complex try simplifying it. I believe what is going on during that stage is it's calculating all of the dependencies and stuff.
I've tried removing a few things from the package list, but it still hung. Maybe I'll check the list archives for how to do a minimal install and try that, and then manually add all the remaining packages I need to see if that fixes the problem.
Alfred
Alfred von Campe wrote:
On May 14, 2009, at 23:36, nate wrote:
hmm, is your package selection particularly complex? In my case I list hundreds of packages in my %packages section I don't have groups and stuff. I assume your using a stock CentOS install and you didn't put any of your own 3rd party rpms in the installation and update the comps.xml(?) file to include them?
No, it's not very complex (see below). I use a stock CentOS install for kickstart, but I do install some packages from the RPMforge repo during the post installation phase. I've been using this package list for years with some minor modifications:
%packages @ admin-tools @ authoring-and-publishing @ base @ base-x @ development-tools @ editors @ emacs @ engineering-and-scientific @ games @ gnome-desktop @ gnome-software-development @ graphical-internet @ graphics @ kde-desktop @ kde-software-development @ legacy-software-development @ office @ printing @ server-cfg @ smb-server @ sound-and-video @ system-tools @ text-internet @ web-server @ x-software-development -dmraid -yum-updatesd boost boost-devel dejagnu ElectricFence foomatic expect minicom mkisofs ncurses-devel openmotif system-config-boot system-config-kickstart system-switch-mail system-switch-mail-gnome vim-X11 wireshark-gnome
I'm not sure what to suggest..if your packages selection is complex try simplifying it. I believe what is going on during that stage is it's calculating all of the dependencies and stuff.
I've tried removing a few things from the package list, but it still hung. Maybe I'll check the list archives for how to do a minimal install and try that, and then manually add all the remaining packages I need to see if that fixes the problem.
Alfred
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Hi,
I haven't read all of this thread, but if you are seeing that your installs start but hangs when installing a particular RPM then I have seen this in 5.{1,2,3}. In my particular case I have noticed that it generally seems to be larger RPMS such as the CentOS Openoffice RPMS on machines with a small amount of RAM.
Removing the RPMS that your system gets stuck on can be painful to work out but at the very least I would recommend that you remove any custom RPMS you have created and then the Open Office ones.
Installing these RPMS in the Post-install section seems to work fine.
I hope this helps :)
Good Luck
-
Alfred von Campe -
Clint Dilks -
nate