Kickstarting CentOS 7 VM On CentOS 6 Not Possible?

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CentOS 4 Comments

Hi,

On CentOS 6.7 (all updates) kickstarting a CentOS 7 VM (in the way it always has worked for other versions, incl. Fedora 22 VM’s), does not work for me. I use virt-install with a local copy of the
“images/pxeboot” tree. It all stops with:

…
[ OK ] Reached target Paths.
[ OK ] Reached target Basic System.
dracut-initqueue[551]: Warning: Could not boot.
dracut-initqueue[551]: Warning: /dev/root does not exist
Starting Dracut Emergency Shell…
Warning: /dev/root does not exist
…

I found zillion references to similar problems, including PXE-related
(I do not use PXE, but “-l” with virt-install) and cobbler-related
(no Cobbler involved), and I tried some of the suggestions, but none of them worked.

Installing CentOS 7 “manually” using virt-install and the netboot ISO
works fine, but I want to use kickstart files.

Thanks for any suggestion.

4 thoughts on - Kickstarting CentOS 7 VM On CentOS 6 Not Possible?

  • Does your tree also include the LiveOS structure (the stage2 installer)?

    Using a local install tree isn’t required for kickstart. You can specify the location of the KS file as a boot arg and also use the ISO
    installer.

  • Yep. In fact, I tried it with and without that LiveOS/squashfs.img
    (I was not sure if that was required or just a speed-up).

    But how can the VM then access the kickstart file on the host disk?
    Now it is injected in the initrd with that special flag, or can that be done in combination with the ISO too?

  • I can say that it works for sure, so can you share your virt-install command / kickstart / extra-args ?

    I’m injecting the kickstart directly into the initrd.img
    (transparently through –initrd-inject= )

    –

  • It seems that after updating the host to 6.7 some things have changed that I didn’t test. Now the install continues, but just after switching to graphical mode, it eats CPU time and doesn’t proceed. It once reacted to CTRL-ALT keys (via the VNC menu) and I saw something like
    “EQ overflow”, but the next time it doesnt.

    Anyway, I’ll do some more testing, also with text mode, as I’m not having a clear overview myself anymore on what’s happening ;-).

    Me too.