RHEL3 Kickstart on Itanium (IA64)

Recently I have installed several Redhat systems on IA64 platforms. Since it required only slight adjustments, and since there were two sets of systems, RHEL3 Update2 and RHEL4 Update3, I have decided to use Kickstart for both, each with his own ks.cfg file.

For lack of any other explanation at the moment, I can only say I feel I have encountered a bug with RHEL3 on IA64 platform and ks handling.

Steps:

1. Bring up a dedicated installation server. Install on it DHCP Server, Name Server, TFTP Service (activated from xinetd), NFS Service.

2. Setup DHCP for a dedicated network card. Address pool 192.168.0.x. Server IP: 192.168.0.1

3. Verify it’s working.

4. Extract RH images to the NFS root directory, under the distro name. Example – /install/rhel3.2-ia64

5. Add elilo PXE image for IA64 in /tftpboot. Add a file elilo.conf (elilo.conf)

6. Install both servers – RHEL3 and RHEL4

7. Take anaconda-ks.cfg and use it (with slight modifications) to fit my needs. Really minor changes.

8. Boot the next nodes based on these ks files. (RHEL3 ks file: ks.cfg)

While RHEL4 works fine and uses my ks.cfg, RHEL3 does not. It seems to start using it, and then go on to asking me all these annoying questions (Welcome to RedHat 3 installation!)

I have even tried building ks.cfg using redhat-config-kickstart tool, but same results.

Since installation is done using serial console, I cannot access other virtual consoles and debug the problem on-the-fly.

***UPDATE***

Per a suggestion in a forum, I have looked again into the elilo.conf file, and noticed that the ks path was different. Matter of paying attention. This is probably the problem, and I will verify it soon.