So I've figured out the issue (finally). Apparently, the
optional
grub stage 1.5 is stored in the normally unused space between the mbr
and the start of the first partition. The image I chose to use for my
testing did use this grub stage 1.5 (I think fedora doesn't by default
though), and of course, I wasn't capturing that data in my images (I
only recorded mbr, partition table, and partition contents)
So I've modified my script to capture three things now.
1) the first 63 sectors (63 * 512 bytes) of the hard drive. This
includes the mbr and all space before the first partition, which
starts on sector 63 for all machines I've looked at. I'm assuming
this is always the case (is this a valid assumption?)
2) The output from sfdisk -d, to capture extended partitions
3) A full image of each partition using dd.
I've tested this and it seems to work perfectly. I've attached the
most recent version of my kickstart file which includes the script.
The next step at this point, and correct me if I'm wrong, is to get
partimage or some other utility to stand in for dd.
I was taking a look at partimage-ng, which looks like a full rewrite
of partimage that looks promising. It also has built in capability to
fall back to a dd like copy for unknown filesystems.
Oh, and also: Unless partimage somehow captures that data
automatically, as far as I can tell XCat's imaging functionality has
the same issue. I figure we just hadn't run into it yet because all
the Red Hat based images we have don't use the grub stage 1.5.
-Andrew Brown
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This file also came across without a GPL license header. Can you please
add one (GPLv2+) as found on the other cobbler files or otherwise reply
and say I can add it? This is also needed for us to host the ISO in a
common download location.
Thanks!
--Michael