On Nov 12, 2014, at 16:35 , Stephen Berg (Contractor) wrote:
> I have a desktop system with Nvidia MCP55 ethernet chipset. From my research
> this onboard NIC is supported in the kernel for SL7.
You corrected that statement in a reply - EL7 doesn't support this chip. Right?
> I can get the system to pxeboot but dracut dumps out to a prompt since it
> can't find any network to do the kickstart install.
Is it really dracut? Or anaconda?
> Is there any way to force load the forcedeth.ko driver at pxeboot install
> time? I have a dozen or so desktops that use the same NIC (SuperMicro
> H8DA8-2 motherboard) that are on the bubble to be re-installed with SL7 but
> so far this seems to be a show stopper.
If the NIC isn't supported, you'll have to provide a driver with every kernel
update. ELrepo may help with this (after successful installation), but you'll
have to check.
To get kickstart installs over the network going, the keyword is "driverdisk".
Alas, the last time I had to resort to this was more than a decade ago, thus
everything I know about it is outdated. The kickstart option seems still to be
there, but I couldn't find any recent instructions how to create one. And then
you'll have to make it available to the installer on a local device, since it's
a network driver you need. I think back then I was using a floppy. Good grief...
NB It's not unlikely that more components on those systems are no longer
supported. Maybe you should just take it as a strong hint to replace the
systems before the EL6 EOL?
Anyway, hope this helps
Stephan
> One additional oddity I've been seeing: The anaconda screen I see says this
> is a pre-release. Pretty sure I pulled the vmlinuz and initrd.img files from
> the release DVD iso. I copied them again from a new download that passes the
> sha256sum check, and they appear to be identical.
--
Stephan Wiesand
DESY -DV-
Platanenenallee 6
15738 Zeuthen, Germany
