CentOS - Jul 2011 - CentOS 6 PXE boot:Unable to download the kickstart file

We have CentOS 6 manual installation working by PXE booting from a RHEL5.6
PXE/TFTP server.  However, when we add a Kickstart file in the PXE
configuration:

    kernel CentOS-6-i386/vmlinuz
    append load_ramdisk=1 initrd=CentOS-6-i386/initrd.img network
ks=nfs:130.226.86.4:/u/rpm/kickstart/ks-centos-6-clean-i386.cfg

then the CentOS 6 client install reports "Unable to download the kickstart
file".
The console 3 reports "failed to mount nfs source".
We believe the NFS server is OK because we can install CentOS5 clients in
this way.

Perhaps this problem is related to this RHEL6 bug?
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=653655

However, on the centos list I see some people who apparently go Kickstart
to work with CentOS 6 - but how did they do it?

Question: What special configuration is required for either 1) PXE or
2) the DHCP server?

Thanks,
Ole

-- 
Ole Holm Nielsen
Department of Physics, Technical University of Denmark

Ole Holm Nielsen wrote:
> We have CentOS 6 manual installation working by PXE booting from a RHEL5.6
> PXE/TFTP server.  However, when we add a Kickstart file in the PXE
> configuration:
>
>     kernel CentOS-6-i386/vmlinuz
>     append load_ramdisk=1 initrd=CentOS-6-i386/initrd.img network
> ks=nfs:130.226.86.4:/u/rpm/kickstart/ks-centos-6-clean-i386.cfg
>
> then the CentOS 6 client install reports "Unable to download the
kickstart
> file".
> The console 3 reports "failed to mount nfs source".
> We believe the NFS server is OK because we can install CentOS5 clients in
> this way.
<snip>
> However, on the centos list I see some people who apparently go Kickstart
> to work with CentOS 6 - but how did they do it?
>
> Question: What special configuration is required for either 1) PXE or
> 2) the DHCP server?
I just cloned the 5.6 install, and it worked.

Well, kinda. You may have seen, or missed, the thread a couple weeks ago,
about this: we do have a local repository, and comps.xml was missing.
Then, having now switched to my new workstation, I found that window
manager names changes (like KDE and Gnome), so they weren't installed, and
for some reason, xorg was not a prerequisite. OO.o, btw, has had a group
name change as well.

          mark, working his way through

> Ole Holm Nielsen wrote:
>> We have CentOS 6 manual installation working by PXE booting from a
RHEL5.6
>> PXE/TFTP server.  However, when we add a Kickstart file in the PXE
>> configuration:
>>
>>     kernel CentOS-6-i386/vmlinuz
>>     append load_ramdisk=1 initrd=CentOS-6-i386/initrd.img network
>> ks=nfs:130.226.86.4:/u/rpm/kickstart/ks-centos-6-clean-i386.cfg
>>
>> then the CentOS 6 client install reports "Unable to download the
kickstart
>> file".
>> The console 3 reports "failed to mount nfs source".
>> We believe the NFS server is OK because we can install CentOS5 clients
in
>> this way.
> <snip>
>> However, on the centos list I see some people who apparently go
Kickstart
>> to work with CentOS 6 - but how did they do it?
>>
>> Question: What special configuration is required for either 1) PXE or
>> 2) the DHCP server?
> 
> I just cloned the 5.6 install, and it worked.
> 
> Well, kinda. You may have seen, or missed, the thread a couple weeks ago,
> about this: we do have a local repository, and comps.xml was missing.
> Then, having now switched to my new workstation, I found that window
> manager names changes (like KDE and Gnome), so they weren't installed,
and
> for some reason, xorg was not a prerequisite. OO.o, btw, has had a group
> name change as well.
I fail to see how your repository problem is related to my Kickstart PXE/NFS
problem.  We can install CentOS 6 (no Kickstart) without problems using PXE.
It's the NFS-mounting of the Kickstart-file which fails.  What I'd love
to learn
is how others have made NFS/Kickstart work...

/Ole

Ole Holm Nielsen wrote:
> We have CentOS 6 manual installation working by PXE booting from a RHEL5.6
> PXE/TFTP server.  However, when we add a Kickstart file in the PXE
> configuration:
> 
>     kernel CentOS-6-i386/vmlinuz
>     append load_ramdisk=1 initrd=CentOS-6-i386/initrd.img network
> ks=nfs:130.226.86.4:/u/rpm/kickstart/ks-centos-6-clean-i386.cfg
> 
> then the CentOS 6 client install reports "Unable to download the
kickstart file".
> The console 3 reports "failed to mount nfs source".
This problem has been resolved.  A silly editing error replacing 5->6 also
changed the IP-address :-(  With the correct IP-address Kickstart works
correctly with an NFSv3 server as shown above.  No need to upgrade to NFSv4
and Kerberos :-)

For the record, it is in fact possible to add NFS mount options to the PXE 
APPEND line, as documented in
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda_Boot_Options.
To explicitly force an NFSv3 mount you may add the following NFS mount option:
    ks=nfs:nfsvers=3:servername:filename

Thanks again for everybody's help.
/Ole