Bug in anaconda / kickstart...

[Harald_Jensas at Dell.com]

Hi,

Did you try running partprobe as the last thing you do in the %pre
script?



> -----Original Message-----
> From: linux-poweredge-bounces at dell.com [mailto:linux-poweredge-
> bounces at dell.com] On Behalf Of Cris Rhea
> Sent: 05 February 2008 04:59
> To: linux-poweredge-Lists
> Subject: Bug in anaconda / kickstart...
> 
> I came across a series of postings by Matt Domach and Michael Brown
> regarding
> Anaconda/Kickstart and disk signatures (Dell desktop list)...
> 
> I'm looking for some advice in how to get what I believe is a bug in
> Anaconda fixed (or at least find a work-around)-- finding folks who
> understand
> the inner workings of Anaconda has proven to be difficult.
> 
> Here's what I'm trying to do:
> 
> In the Kickstart file, I am manually partitioning the disk:
> 
> %pre
> 
> sfdisk -uM /dev/sda <<EOF
> ,150,L
> ,,E
> ;
> ;
> ,512,L
> ,2048,S
> ,6000,L
> ,2048,L
> ,10000,L
> ,,L
> EOF
> 
> -----
> 
> 
> In the install section of the KS file, I'm assigning specific file
> systems
> to those partitions:
> 
> part /boot --fstype ext3 --onpart sda1
> part /tmp --fstype ext3 --onpart sda9
> part /var --fstype ext3 --onpart sda8
> part swap --onpart sda6
> part /local1 --fstype ext3 --onpart sda10
> part /usr --fstype ext3 --onpart sda7
> part / --fstype ext3 --onpart sda5
> 
> 
> This technique has worked for years... (on simple, single disk web
> servers, cluster
> nodes, etc., I don't see any advantage to using LVM for everything as
> most installs
> do by default these days).
> 
> If I do the above, Anaconda croaks (and the install aborts) with:
> 
> 15:27:41 CRITICAL: parted exception: Error: Error informing the kernel
> about
> modifications to partition /dev/sda5 -- Device or resource busy.  This
> means
> Linux won't know about any changes you made to /dev/sda5 until you
> reboot -- so you
> shouldn't mount it or use it in any way before rebooting.
> 
> I'm running CentOS--
> 
> This worked in CentOS4.4, but broke in 4.5 onward (including CentOS
> 5.0/5.1).
> Previously, I could work around this by loading the OS from a static
> repository
> of CentOS 4.4 and apply the updates to bring it up to 4.6. Since all
> versions of 5
> are broken, I can no longer build systems using Kickstart + this
> method.
> 
> I have a couple Anaconda dump files if anybody is interested... (about
> 10K lines each).
> 
> Traceback (most recent call first):
>   File "/tmp/treedir.24162/instimage/usr/lib/anaconda/partedUtils.py",
> line 892, in savePartitions
>     disk.commit()
>   File "/tmp/treedir.24162/instimage/usr/lib/anaconda/packages.py",
> line 147, in turnOnFilesystems
>     anaconda.id.diskset.savePartitions ()
>   File "/usr/lib/anaconda/dispatch.py", line 201, in moveStep
>     rc = stepFunc(self.anaconda)
>   File "/usr/lib/anaconda/dispatch.py", line 124, in gotoNext
>     self.moveStep()
>   File "/usr/lib/anaconda/gui.py", line 1018, in nextClicked
>     self.anaconda.dispatch.gotoNext()
>   File "/usr/lib/anaconda/iw/progress_gui.py", line 243, in
> renderCallback
>     self.intf.icw.nextClicked()
>   File "/usr/lib/anaconda/gui.py", line 1045, in handleRenderCallback
>     self.currentWindow.renderCallback()
> error: Error: Error informing the kernel about modifications to
> partition /dev/sda5 -- Device or resource busy.  This means Linux
won't
> know about any changes you made to /dev/sda5 until you reboot -- so
you
> shouldn't mount it or use it in any way before rebooting.
> 
> 
> I can reproduce this 100% of the time, on a variety of hardware-- my
> latest
> attempts to find a work-around have been on a PE1855 blade...
> 
> I don't understand how to build a boot-disk image from scratch well
> enough to
> try to debug Anaconda myself...
> 
> I'd appreciate any ideas/pointers...  I've been looking for a solution
> for
> about 6 months.... listed this as a bug on the CentOS site, but either
> nobody
> has the Anaconda knowledge or the time...
> 
> --- Cris
> 
> 
> --
>  Cristopher J. Rhea
>  Mayo Clinic - Research Computing Facility
>  200 First St SW, Rochester, MN 55905
>  crhea at Mayo.EDU
>  (507) 284-0587
> 
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