pxeboot install

[vtwin@cox.net]

I'm trying to add centos 8 to my pxeboot server and having zero success.

i have rsync'd the centos/8/* files to my server's path /remoteinstall/boot/x64/images/centos8 (as I have done in the past with centos7 and centos6)

I copied my pxeboot entry for centos 7 (which works fine)

LABEL xc7
kernel images/centos7/os/x86_64/isolinux/vmlinuz
append initrd=images/centos7/os/x86_64/isolinux/initrd.img ip=dhcp repo=nfs:w.x.y.z:/remoteinstall/boot/x64/images/centos7/os/x86_64


and made some modifications... now... this is where I seem to be running into a problem. There are several initrd.img files and vmlinuz files in the centos8 tree, so I'm not sure specifically which one to use.

LABEL xc8
kernel images/centos8/baseos/x86_64/os/isolinux/vmlinuz
append initrd=images/centos8/baseos/x86_64/os/isolinux/initrd.img ip=dhcp inst.repo=nfs:w.x.y.z:/remoteinstall/boot/x64/images/centos8/baseos/x86_64/os

and I boot up but end up in the dracut-initqueue - timeout starting timeout scripts loop followed by the /dev/root does not exist error.

I've tried other paths to vmlinuz and initrd.img with the same error.

can someone point me in the proper direction as to what I'm doing wrong? Not sure why this worked okay w/ Centos 6 and 7 and now it seems broken in 8.

Thanks,
Vinny

[vtwin@cox.net]

thoughts anyone?

[TrevorH]

Code: Select all

LABEL CentOS 8 x86_64 manual
        MENU LABEL CentOS 8.0 x86_64 manual
        KERNEL images/centos/x86_64/8.0/vmlinuz
        APPEND initrd=images/centos/x86_64/8.0/initrd.img ramdisk_size=100000 ip=dhcp repo=http://a.b.c.d/mirrors/CentOS-8-x86_64/

and

/var/www/html/mirrors/CentOS-8-x86_64-1905-dvd1.iso on /var/www/html/mirrors/CentOS-8-x86_64 type iso9660 (ro,relatime,nojoliet,check=s,map=n,blocksize=2048)

[vtwin@cox.net]

Code: Select all

LABEL CentOS 8 x86_64 manual
        MENU LABEL CentOS 8.0 x86_64 manual
        KERNEL images/centos/x86_64/8.0/vmlinuz
        APPEND initrd=images/centos/x86_64/8.0/initrd.img ramdisk_size=100000 ip=dhcp repo=http://a.b.c.d/mirrors/CentOS-8-x86_64/

Thank you Trevor. Still no success. I'm just not "getting it" or something here, I don't know why I'm having such a problem w/ this, since all the earlier versions of CentOS installed fine.

Per your note, I downloaded the Linux (not Stream) ISO and extracted it to /remoteinstall/boot/x64/images/CentOS8 (rather than working w/ my rsync'd repo)

My pxeboot config:

LABEL xc8-gui
kernel images/centos8/isolinux/vmlinuz
append initrd=images/centos8/isolinux/initrd.img ip=dhcp repo=nfs:a.b.c.d:/remoteinstall/boot/x64/images/centos8


I pxeboot load fine and eventually I get to the dracut-initqueue timeout messages and then I get the /dev/root not found message.

http is not an option for me protocol-wise. I can access the extracted files over nfs from my other servers without a problem.

I really have no idea what the issue is. My CentOS6 and 7 rsync'd repos install fine with this same process.

[TrevorH]

I seem to recall that NFS installs require weird setup. I've not looked at the CentOS 8 instructions for this but on previous versions you had to put the iso itself in the nfs directory not the contents of it. You'll need to look at the RHEL 8 docs for this and see what that says.

And for my method,, you do not need to "extract" the iso, you just loopback mount it on the directory you want it to be on.