Hi,
Having successfully used Kickstart installation for a few months on physical machines I am now attempting to use the same method/configuration applied to a VM created and managed in VirtualBox. I'm attempting to install OEL 7.1 (or 7.2) and it fails during the examination of packages on the repo server. Using the same DHCP/TFTP and cfg file, when the Kickstart environment is entered the cfg file is read successfully. But having finished with that file the screen clears and then nothing else appears to happen. I cannot get to the virtual terminals under these conditions. The client is pingable but otherwise unresponsive.
So I try for a simple install by removing "inst.ks" from the boot line and adding "inst.text" giving:
images/ol7/vmlinuz initrd=images/ol7/initrd.img inst.stage2=http://10.13.98.4/oraclelinux inst.text
Now in the text based, interactive installer I can make fill in required data. However, typically on entering an installation source (in this case http://10.13.98.4/oraclelinux/) I see a burst of HTTP activity on the server and after some 4700 requests the client display the message "Pane is dead". I assume this is the same condition when running graphical install. Looking on the web I can see that the "Pane is dead" message is often caused by missing %end in the cfg file. I think I can rule that out because the error occurs without a cfg present and besides the cfg file works happily with physical install clients.
The last HTTP activity is the request of xxxxx-primary.sqlite.bz2, the request being satisfied and this being recorded in the access log. When text based, I can get to the shell but this reveals little. The last line of /tmp/packaging.log states
hh:mm:ss,mmm DEBUG yum.verbose.YumBase: Setting up Package Sacks.
Hanging during "Setting up Package Sacks" is apparently not uncommon but usually occurs because of being behind proxy, using https, or conflicting yum processes or stale yum data. All of these I think can be ruled out. The client is on same subnet as repo server, not behind proxy or firewall. The repo satisfies other Kickstart installs and ad-hoc updates.
Further tests showed that the "Pane is dead" error occurs even if the only action is to select text over VNC mode of operation. Under these conditions "Setting up Package Sacks" is still the last text in packaging.log.
The VM host? Dell XPS27 successfully installed using the identical Kickstart process/configuration.
In VirtualBox I have retained the defaults except to change the boot order (network first, naturally).
Does anyone have any suggestion about what else I could try/investigate to solve this problem?
My goal is to create a VM OEL 7.1 or 7.2 image. I can do this simply enough by installing from DVD and adding the additional packages I need.
I might even be able to install to a physical client and use VMware to virtualise that.
But what the approach I'm trying should work and others may have encountered the same and solved it.
TIA