Home / server / Questions / 271791
In Process
brian
Asked: 2011-05-20 20:22:44 +0800 CST

DRAC virtual floppy and kickstart?

  • 772

Situation: I've got some machines with Dell iDRAC6 Enterprises that I need to kickstart remotely.

Usually, I'd go to the datacenter, jam the CD and floppy (with ks.cfg) in the machine, and be on my way. The last build I did, I "burnt" the ISO onto a flash drive with UNetBootin, jammed all the kickstarts on the root of the same flash drive, and was able to boot with "linux ks=hd:sdb1:/hostname-ks.cfg." Problem is, I'm doing everything remotely now.

I've loaded up the DRAC interface and mounted both the floppy with ks.cfg and RHEL netboot CD mounted. It boots off the CD, but when I do

linux ks=floppy

The kickstart can't be located and it proceeds into the regular non-automated installation.

I've also tried "linux ks=fd0:/ks.cfg," "linux ks=hd:fd0:/ks.cfg," and a few other permutations, to no avail.

I think if I could figure out what the device names for the virtual CD and floppy that the DRAC presents to the system are, I'd be in good shape.

redhat drac kickstart

2 Answers

  1. I had the same problem, though it was for installing an ESXi:

    • The Virtal Floppy is considered as generic USB storage (seen in /var/log/messages)
    • The USB device need to have a FAT16/FAT32 partition (seen in /usr/lib/vmware/weasel/usbmedia.py), but it looks specific.

    Context:

    • iDRAC 6 v3.2
    • VMware-VMvisor-Installer-4.1.0.update1-348481.x86_64-Dell_Customized_A04.iso

    Here are the rough steps:

    $ dd if=/dev/zero of=ks.img bs=1000 count=32000 
$ fdisk ks.img

    Create partition and note start*512 as offset (1048576 here) ; Change partition type to FAT16

    $ losetup -o1048576 /dev/loop0 ks.img
$ mkdosfs /dev/loop0
$ mount /dev/loop0 /mnt/tmp
$ cp ks.cfg /mnt/tmp
$ umount /mnt/tmp
$ losetup -d /dev/loop0

    Then add ks=usb on ESXi boot command line.

    • 4

  2. http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/software/smdrac3/idrac/idrac10mono/en/ug/html/racugc1b.htm

    I cannot locate my Virtual Floppy/Virtual CD device on a system running Red Hat Enterprise Linux or the SUSE® Linux operating system. My Virtual Media is attached and I am connected to my remote floppy. What should I do?

    Some Linux versions do not automount the Virtual Floppy Drive and the Virtual CD drive in a similar manner. To mount the Virtual Floppy Drive, locate the device node that Linux assigns to the Virtual Floppy Drive. Perform the following steps to correctly find and mount the Virtual Floppy Drive:

    1. Open a Linux command prompt and run the following command:
      grep "Virtual Floppy" /var/log/messages

    2. Locate the last entry to that message and note the time.

    3. At the Linux prompt, run the following command:
      grep "hh:mm:ss" /var/log/messages where: hh:mm:ss is the time stamp of the message returned by grep in step 1.

    4. In step 3, read the result of the grep command and locate the device name that is given to the Dell Virtual Floppy.

    5. Ensure that you are attached and connected to the Virtual Floppy Drive.
    6. At the Linux prompt, run the following command:
      mount /dev/sdx /mnt/floppy where: /dev/sdx is the device name found in step 4 /mnt/floppy is the mount point.

    It sounds like you might need to install the OS the old fashioned way to begin with, find out the details, and then you should be OK for future installs.

    • 0