Syslinux - Aug 2002 - PXELinux Q(s) :)

Real quick background on what I'm doing now, and what I'm trying to do:
We are using PXELinux with VA's SystemImager software to image new servers 
over our network.  It's been working beautifully since the fall  of 2000 
using a 2.2 kernel.  (Long and short: we bootstrap with PXE, use the initrd 
as the root file system, partition, mount and rsync the new drive, 
reconfigure, lilo and reboot into standalone, all automagically.  It's 
-REALLY- nice.  Currently we're using RH6.2 for the new servers using kernel
2.2.19 and ext2 across the board...the filesystem is important, as I explain 
further...)

However, we're looking to upgrade the client servers to 7.3, including a 
kernel upgrade to 2.4, -and- a filesystem move from ext2 to ext3.
The 2.2.19 kernel that we have PXE pushing across doesn't have ext3 support.
That's a problem.  So, I went ahead and built the new kernel, and it
ain't
working.

Specifically:
The new server comes up, talks to the DHCP server and gets its IP.  No problem 
there.  It then does the PXELinux thing, grabbing the kernel and the 
initrd.gz via TFPT.  Again, no problem.
It uncompresses and boots the kernel, and does well...until the kernel panics.  
For some reason it just can't seem to find 'init'.  It's in the
initrd, as is
everything else that currently works just fine using the 2.2 kernel.  And to 
help troubleshoot, I can make the kernel and initrd available for perusal.

The long and the short of this whole sordid tale is this: does anyone have 
-any- idea why this is happening, and how I can fix it?

Thanks.
-- 
Jerry Gilyeat
Systems Administrator
Alabanza.

Jerry Gilyeat <jerry at voyager.alabanza.com> writes:
> For some reason it just can't seem to find 'init'.  It's in
the
> initrd, as is everything else that currently works just fine using
> the 2.2 kernel.  And to help troubleshoot, I can make the kernel and
> initrd available for perusal.
> 
> The long and the short of this whole sordid tale is this: does
> anyone have -any- idea why this is happening, and how I can fix it?
Maybe try appending "init=/sbin/init" or somesuch to the kernel boot
line?  What is the exact panic message?

You do know that you can use Red Hat's kickstart mechanism to
accomplish the same thing?  Just take Red Hat's bootnet.img disk,
mount it, copy the initrd and vmlinuz binaries to /tftpboot, and
configure pxelinux to load them.  Then you can just boot it with
something like:

   bootnet ks=nfs:server.alabanza.com:/path/to/ks.cfg

...and have a fully automated Red Hat 7.3 installation or upgrade,
entirely off of the network.  Kickstart works better than imaging if
your hardware is not uniform :-).

(Of course, you have to create ks.cfg, but that's not too hard,
especially these days.  The interactive installer creates a sample
ks.cfg for you and leaves it in ~root.)

 - Pat