unattended kickstart installation of esx with a linux boot cd

[morlix]

Hello all,

i have created a linux boot cd which creates a 2GiB ext2 partition on my hp cciss controller, copies the ks.cfg and the esx sources to this partition.

After this, my cd installs grub onto this harddisk and creates an entry in the grub menu.lst file with the following content:

--

default 0

timeout 5

title Install ESX

root (hd0,0)

kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz vmkopts=debugLogToSerial:1 mem=512M ks=hd:/dev/cciss/c0d0p1:/sources/ks.cfg quiet

initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.img

boot

--

Of course the cd also copies the vmlinuz and initrd.img files from the esx isolinux directory to the local partition.

Now if i boot this grub record i get a booting vmware kernel which loads something...

Under the point "mount cd-rom" i get 4 times the error message "cmp: /mnt/source/build_number: No such file or directory" followed by "no install cd found", which i dont understand, because in my ks.cfg i have defined the following

--

...

1. install sources

harddrive --partition=cciss/c0d0p1 --dir=/sources

...

--

And after this i get the following error:

--

Starting weasel

Weasel skipped boot command line token (kd=hd:cciss/c0d0p1:/sources/ks.cfg)

User has not choosen a Weasel run mode

--

Have anyone a idea how to fix this?

Kind regards,

Timo

[bradley4681]

I'm not sure whats happening in your setup but I use this utility a lot and I never have any issues with my kick starts.

http://engineering.xtravirt.com/products/phd-technologies/ks-quickconfig.html

Cheers,

Bradley Sessions

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[morlix]

Hello bradley4681,

i dont think that my ks.cfg is the source of my problems.

I read the whole document for RHEL3 Kickstart before i created my ks.cfg

my ks.cfg

--

install

harddrive --partition=cciss/c0d0p1 --dir=/sources

lang de_DE

keyboard de

langsupport --default de_DE en_US

timezone Europe/Berlin

mouse none

skipx

text

network --device eth0 --bootproto static --ip 192.168.0.1 --netmask 255.255.255.0 --gateway 192.168.0.254 --nameserver 192.168.0.100 --hostname test.esx.de --addvmportgroup=1 --vlanid=0

rootpw qwert

authconfig --enableshadow --enablemd5

firewall --disabled

bootloader --location=mbr --driveorder=cciss/c0d0,sda

vmservconmem --reserved=800

clearpart --none

part /boot --size 250 --ondisk sda --fstype ext3 --asprimary

part / --size 10240 --ondisk sda --fstype ext3 --asprimary

part swap --size 1600 --ondisk sda --fstype swap --asprimary

part /vmimages --size 10240 --ondisk sda --fstype ext3

part local --size 1 --ondisk sda --fstype vmfs2 --grow

part vmkcore --size 100 --ondisk sda --fstype vmkcore

vmaccepteula

vmlicense --mode=server --server=27000@blub.esx.de --edition=esxFull

reboot

%packages

@base

%pre

%post

--

If anybody needs more information, please ask... i need your help!

[jwnchoate]

Did you ever resolve this?

I found out so far that my usb stick is not mounting into /mnt/source after boot up.