Update Installer Kernel

Warning this is a cludge.

Darn seems to work fine with the r610 hardware, but on the existing pe1950s, hardisk doesn't get mounted for reinstall and get left with error message that / doesn't have enough space. Switching back to regular kernel/initrd resolves issue, but I don't understand just what went wrong.

Have a new node (Dell PowerEdge R610) that has NICs that are not supported by the installer in our ROCKS 4.3 / SLC4.5 install. Have tested that the PXE booting images from SL4.8 do work. This is a known issue with the new Ethernet chipset on these systems. (Note that judging by the timestamps on files in initrd.img, ROCKS does not create these fresh when you install a frontend. Seems they are included with ROCKS itself.)

Note that there are ROCKS modifications to the Anaconda (stage 1) that are included in the installer initrd.img file --- we can't just use the new images. (Generally you can't mix images and distro versions, but I think ROCKS disables the signature checks that prevent this...)

Now, there must be some way to rebuild the ROCKS Anaconda installer using the same process it was originally built with (by the developers), but that seems hard, want to avoid that. Indeed, see:

• https://wiki.rocksclusters.org/wiki/index.php/HOWTO_upgrade_OS_and_Kernel_roll_for_Rocks_4.3 *

OK try to hack it

First get the new initrd.img, unzip and mount it. Do the same for the old one. InitrdDump

In the old one:

=== root@msurox /tmp/rocks > ls -l mnt 
total 1471
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root       4 Jul  6  2007 bin -> sbin
-rw-r--r--   1 root root 1474560 Jul  6  2007 dd.img
drwxr-xr-x   4 root root    1024 Jul  6  2007 dev
drwxr-xr-x  10 root root    1024 Jul  6  2007 etc
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root    2048 Jul  6  2007 lib64
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root      10 Jul  6  2007 linuxrc -> /sbin/init
drwx------   2 root root   12288 Jul  6  2007 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root    1024 Jul  6  2007 mnt
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root    1024 Jul  6  2007 modules
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root    1024 Jul  6  2007 proc
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root    1024 Jul  6  2007 sbin
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root    1024 Jul  6  2007 selinux
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root    1024 Jul  6  2007 sys
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root    1024 Jul  6  2007 tmp
drwxr-xr-x   5 root root    1024 Jul  6  2007 var

In the new one:

=== root@msurox /tmp/rocks > ls -l ../sl4x/mnt/
total 21
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root     4 Jul  7 10:39 bin -> sbin
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root  1024 Jul  7 10:39 dev
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root  1024 Jul  7 10:39 etc
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    10 Jul  7 10:39 linuxrc -> /sbin/init
drwx------  2 root root 12288 Jul  7 10:39 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  1024 Jul  7 10:39 modules
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  1024 Jul  7 10:39 proc
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  1024 Jul  7 10:39 sbin
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  1024 Jul  7 10:39 selinux
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  1024 Jul  7 10:39 sys
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  1024 Jul  7 10:39 tmp
drwxr-xr-x  5 root root  1024 Jul  7 10:39 var

Note that only ROCKS one has dd.img, but that seems to be a skeleton, won't worry about it.

Easy Just transfer modules dir from new to old:

=== root@msurox /tmp/rocks > rm -rf mnt/modules 
=== root@msurox /tmp/rocks > cp -r ../sl4x/mnt/modules mnt

Pack it back up and cross fingers.

-- TomRockwell - 10 Sep 2009