CentOS - Jul 2008 - Anaconda ignores "cmdline" directive

Hello,

Our environment: CentOS 5.2 (updated over time with "yum update",
current "yum update" lists about 7 packages out of date), x86_64.
Running Xen, building Xen DomU's with kickstart.

We are trying to debug the %post part of the kickstart process for
DomU and are hitting difficulties in accessing the output.

For a start, the "cmdline" directive in the kickstart seems to be
ignored and it stays in "text" (ncurses) mode.

Here is the kickstart file we use:

install
url --url http://a.b.c.d/centos/5.2/os/x86_64
logging --level=debug
lang en_US.UTF-8
network --device eth0 --bootproto static --ip=a.b.c.e
--netmask=255.255.255.0 --gateway=a.b.c.f --nameserver=a.b.c.g
--hostname domu-hostname
rootpw --iscrypted $1$password
authconfig --enableshadow --enablemd5
selinux --disabled
timezone --utc Australia/Sydney
bootloader --location=mbr --driveorder=xvda --append="console=xvc0"
poweroff
cmdline
# Partitioning
zerombr
clearpart --all --initlabel --drives=xvda
part /boot --fstype ext3 --size=100 --ondisk=xvda
part pv.2 --size=0 --grow --ondisk=xvda
volgroup xxx --pesize=32768 pv.2
logvol / --fstype ext3 --name=root --vgname=xxx --size=1024 --grow
logvol swap --fstype swap --name=swap --vgname=xxx --size=256 --grow
--maxsize=512
%packages --nobase
wget
%post
set -x
echo hello world

Can anyone point what are we missing?

Googl'ing around just keeps coming up with pages saying that this
should work (e.g. "Running anaconda in real text-mode" and
"Logging
%pre and %post" in http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/KickStart) but
the problem so far still remains that Anaconda uses ncurses, not
"cmdline".

Thanks,

--Amos

Amos Shapira wrote on Fri, 4 Jul 2008 14:12:41 +1000:
> For a start, the "cmdline" directive in the kickstart seems to be
> ignored and it stays in "text" (ncurses) mode.
I'm using cmdline all the time and there *is* a difference to text. The 
output is b/w and if it has to fallback to the "gui" that gets drawn
with
ascii characters and not with "blocks" and such.
What's the output that you get? I wouldn't say that "cmdline"
is any
better for debugging apart from the fact that you get most output line by 
line, so you can review it later. This line by line output mostly applies 
to the list of software that gets installed. I don't have a %post% install 
section. AFAIk, postinstall is a problem as it isn't run as root or so 
(see deployment guide section for kickstart).

Kai

-- 
Kai Sch?tzl, Berlin, Germany
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