Hi folks,
I've been playing with the features to install kernels during
client/server side jobs, and I've noticed some problems with boottool on
Fedora/RHEL systems. I figured it'd be best to write asking for some
advice, maybe I am doing something wrong here.
1) Boottool can't set a particular entry to boot once - once we call
methods on the job.kernel object, such as
k = job.kernel(...
k.boot()
This translates to boottool executing the following commands:
...
10/05 22:56:16 DEBUG| utils:0073| Running
'/usr/local/autotest/tools/boottool "--remove-kernel=autotest"'
10/05 22:56:17 DEBUG| utils:0073| Running
'/usr/local/autotest/tools/boottool "--info=all"'
10/05 22:56:17 DEBUG| utils:0073| Running
'/usr/local/autotest/tools/boottool
"--add-kernel=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.36-0.32.rc6.git2.fc15.x86_64"
"--title=autotest" "--args=IDENT=1286333776" "--position=end"'
...
10/05 22:56:17 DEBUG| utils:0073| Running
'/usr/local/autotest/tools/boottool "--boot-once" "--title=autotest"'
The program fails to make the next boot to use the newly created entry.
2) Boottool can't copy kernel arguments vital to boot: Most RHEL and
Fedora systems use lvm, so the command line for fedora looks like:
title Fedora (2.6.36-0.32.rc6.git2.fc15.x86_64)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.36-0.32.rc6.git2.fc15.x86_64 ro
root=/dev/mapper/vg_virtlab15-lv_root rd_LVM_LV=vg_virtlab15/lv_root
rd_LVM_LV=vg_virtlab15/lv_swap rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8
SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet
The entry generated by boottool looks like
title autotest
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.36-0.32.rc6.git2.fc15.x86_64
root=/dev/mapper/vg_virtlab15-lv_root IDENT=1286333776
savedefault
So even if the flag --boot-once worked, it would cause a kernel panic
(unable to boot since /dev/mapper/vg_* is unknown). Questions:
* Has anyone found similar problems? I can only assume it's working well
for the systems you guys use routinely
* There's a tool called grubby, similar in purpose to boottool, that is
very popular for red hat based systems, that could be used as an
optional backend for boottool. In your opinion, is it better to try to
fix boottool or use grubby?
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