DVD not found error while kickstart installation on RHEL 6.5/6.4

Question

I want ks.cfg on dvd itself to keep everything at same place.

Content of isolinux/isolinux.cfg

label ks
  menu label ^Kickstart
  kernel vmlinuz
  append initrd=initrd.img ks=cdrom:/ks.cfg

And ks.cfg is on top / of cdrom. but when actual installation starts it says disk not found in any of cdrom. I am creating iso with following command,

mkisofs -o $ISO_NAME -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -J -l -r -T -v .

I tried with creating new dir /ks/ks.cfg but it is also not working

Answer 1

Ensure you have copied the hidden files from the root of the original ISO into the root of your new ISO build path. This might need to be done manually.

The files are:

• .discinfo
• .treeinfo

Answer 2

For saving the time of people who might face the similar issue in future (believe me I have wasted 2-3 days), when you test the custom-built iso in a virtual environment (eg: VirtualBox), it emulates the ISO and presents it to the virtual machine as a CDROM device. While when you will test on a bare/physical server, it will be presented as a /dev/sdX device (where X may be a,b,b1,c2, and so on depending on the number of external devices or USBs attached to the machine, ex: /dev/sdb1). So, giving the path of ks file as cdrom:/ks/ks.cfg won't work on bare servers/machines, so the best option is to use the "LABEL" for identification of media. But for this, you will have to build your ISO and make it bootable using the same custom LABEL. You will also have to specify the LABEL identification method in your isolinux.cfg file.

For ex:

Your isolinux.cfg's menu entry should look like this:

label check
   menu label Install CentOS with MY Customizations
   menu default
   kernel vmlinuz biosdevname=0
   append initrd=initrd.img inst.stage2=hd:LABEL=MYCUSTOMISO ks=hd:LABEL=MYCUSTOMISO:/ks/ks.cfg

In above example, the kickstart file is located in the ks folder which is at the root directory of installation media. You should build your ISO using "-V" switch and specify your ISO's LABEL. (Don't worry, the bootable disk creation tools usually change the label of your USB to the value passed in this -V switch (if they don't, manually give the disk this specific label)

mkisofs -o /home/mycustom.iso -V 'MYCUSTOMISO' -b isolinux.bin -c boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -R -J -v -T /home/cent/CustomISO/kickstart_build/isolinux/

Please refer the official RedHat documentation for more details on how to make Kickstart available at installation time: https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/6/html/installation_guide/s1-kickstart2-startinginstall

Also, pykickstart docs are great one-stop reference for your kickstart needs: https://pykickstart.readthedocs.io/en/latest/kickstart-docs.html