(Using cobbler 2.6.5 to install RHEL 6.x)
The general issue. In the "%pre" section of the cobbler kickstart file we have
a snippet whose purpose is to check a detail of the client machine and, if things are OK,
set some variables and proceed as usual. This is the normal case.
But sometimes, particularly with new hardware types, we expect that check to fail; we then
want things to stop and print a decent error message.
The detail. [[ Don't worry about this detail; you may skip this paragraph]] Our
client systems have an internal (RAID mirrored) system disk and various external
fibre-channel disks. It is vital that cobbler picks the system disk. So our
"%pre" snippet has a list of "known good"
"/dev/disk/by-path" entries. If one of those is found on the client system,
things proceed properly. But if none is found, this suggests new, untested hardware; so
kickstart ends up with invalid "part ...--ondisk=$SD" and halts. This is OK but
dirty. (We can then look at "/tmp/ks-pre.log" via the "Alt-F2"
screen, to find the disk we want on this and future installs, so we can add it to the
"known-good" list in perpetuity.)
What would be much better is if that snippet itself could (a) produce error messages on
the main screen and (b) cleanly halt.
Any thoughts? What have I missed?
-- David Lee, DHS, ECMWF