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I have a working RedHat kickstart, but I need it to load a RAID storage driver at the outset. I have the driver for this RAID card, all packaged up in a nice driver disk image.

How do I specify (either with the kernel command line 'dd' or the kickstart 'driverdisk') that my driver.img file is on the install CDROM, and at what path? There are oblique references to being able to specify a cdrom:// location or similar, but I can't find any official documentation nor any specific working example.

This is for an unattended install where ftp/nfs/http is not an option. For obvious reasons I can't specify a hard disk partition

I strongly prefer to NOT have to rewrite the install initrd if at all possible. Is there a way to do this?

Joe
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3 Answers3

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You can't do it that way. Anaconda won't load a driver disk from CD-ROM or DVD media, and besides, you wouldn't want to devote an entire CD/DVD to a couple of megabytes anyway. Nor will it mount a disc image file from CD/DVD media.

What you can do is to put the driver disk on a USB stick, and boot from the CD-ROM with the USB stick inserted. Organize the USB stick such that the rhdd3 file and the rpms directory are at the top level of the USB stick, and change its volume label to oemdrv. In this case the installer will automatically load the drivers from the USB stick.

(You could also do this with the installation media on a USB stick and the driver disk on a second USB stick...)

Michael Hampton
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  • In this case we're shipping media to customers. I really would like it all on a single disc. I can have a driver disk image (as a self-contained .img file) on a USB stick and it works, I don't get why I can't do the same with the CD. So frustrating. Thanks for your input. – Joe Feb 21 '13 at 02:25
  • The other option is to get your RAID card's drivers into the Linux kernel, so that it's no longer an issue. :) – Michael Hampton Feb 21 '13 at 02:26
  • Maybe you can put the driver disk _image_ on the USB stick along with the installation media. But that means you ship USB boot media instead of CD/DVD boot media. I haven't tried this myself yet, though... – Michael Hampton Feb 21 '13 at 02:34
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Place your img file containing the drivers inside the initrd.img, (extract it and place it in /tmp/, inside initrd.img)

Then, from isolinux.cfg:

Append text: initrd=initrd.img ks=cdrom dd=path:/tmp/dd.img

Where initrd.img is my ramdisk and dd.img is the driver disk.

MatteoBee
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Are you looking for driverdisk kickstart option?

driverdisk

Driver diskettes can be used during kickstart installations. You need to copy the driver disk's contents to the root directory of a partition on the system's hard drive. Then you need to use the driverdisk command to tell the installation program where to look for the driver disk.

driverdisk |--source=|--biospart=

Partition containing the driver disk.

--source=

Specify a URL for the driver disk. NFS locations can be given with nfs:host:/path/to/img.

--biospart=

BIOS partition containing the driver disk (such as 82p2).

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Kickstart#driverdisk

Mircea Vutcovici
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  • I've read all that. I'm trying to figure out if I can use the CDROM media as a source for the driver disk (image) in addition to being the OS source disk. – Joe Feb 21 '13 at 02:25
  • You could use %pre to load the modules and %post to install the drivers in the final location. But you will spend more time, then adding the driver in the initrd – Mircea Vutcovici Feb 21 '13 at 02:37
  • What would I need to do in the initrd case? – Joe Feb 21 '13 at 02:46
  • initrd contains the root filesystem before pivot_root. It is used to hold some scripts and the modules. You must make sure that the modules will be installed in the initrd of the new system too. – Mircea Vutcovici Feb 21 '13 at 05:48