Hello,

I am trying to figure out if it is possible to have a single ks.cfg file on a cdrom attempt to perform an nfs install and choose from one of multiple available nfs servers.

I have 2 nfs servers that work in different parts of my buildings so im trying to make it where there is a single ks file that can try server1 then if no go try server2


I tried something like this but of course it does not work:
nfs --server=10.10.250.206,10.10.0.250 --dir=/install/rh/4/u6/x32



Is there anyway for anaconda to be give a list of possible servers to try to perform an install from?

Thanks.

I don't think that it can be done from within the kickstart script itself. However, you might be able to get the same effect with DNS. Is you setup a a round robin DNS entry just for the kickstart installs, that might give you the functionality that you're looking for. The configuration would be something like this:

I am not sure how to apply your answer.

Are you asking if our NFS servers are in a round robin DNS configuration (like bigIP/3dns)?

Or are you saying I can simulate one with what you are describing, and if so where/how does this code sample get used ? I do not have control over our network configuration so any solution needs to be contained on my cd.

As you can probably tell I am very new at Linux. I appreciate the feedback.


Thanks..

Sorry, re-reading my post proves to me that I should have finished my coffee before replying

I wasn't asking if your NFS servers were behind a load balancer. I was suggesting that you modify your DNS configuration to allow a kind of poor man's load balancer. If you add something like the snippet I provided into the appropriate zone file for your NFS server's domain, then the DNS server will alternate which IP address it gives for each request. This should allow your kickstart connection to use NFS server B if the connection to NFS server A fails. I've never actually tried this, but I think it can solve the problem that you're having if you can get your network people to add the entries to your DNS server.

If you can't get your network people to do that, then you'll be stuck either specifying one of the NFS server's IP's on the CD or entering it manually from the command line when you fire off the kickstart install. I don't know of any other way to specify an alternate server for kickstart.

There is no way for me to get the network changed on their end, so I need to come up with a way to do this on my side and on the cd so it will have to be a static solution. I was hoping you were saying that there was a way to do something like a windows host file on the cd where the same name could be redirected to one or more ip addresses, then it would just hit the first one it finds.

On a side note, I do not have the scripting knowledge but do you or anyone else know how to write a script that could be launched during %pre that could try to verify that it can connect to servers A or B and then somehow use an INCLUDE line instead of the the static line
nfs --server=10.10.1.1 ...

say something like this:

nfs --server=%include IP address here%

I'm not sure of another way to get kickstart to do what you want. You might be able to do what you want with a script, but it would likely take a lot of work to get it to function the way that you want. Someone else with stronger shell-fu might be able to give you better advice on that though.

what you want' can't be done on automated installation.
unless you do have some kind of failover set for the system
hosting the installation tree. but at the kickstart side of
things, not possible.
unless you skip the definition of the installation source
and have anaconda prompt you for it.

Thanks,

For now I have hard coded both the dns names and ip addresses on the
--server= line as one long string, this causes the user to be "prompted" with an error so all they have to do now is just erase the un-needed bits from the line and hit enter. Since this happens almost at the start of the kickstart process it still leaves me with a 99% fire and forget process that I can live with.

My next project is to do the same thing with SLES and autoyast but Im running into issues just trying to get the fundamentals down from a floppy disk which is sort of working.

When I have tried to intergrate this into the master cdrom project, i keep getting problems with either the info/autoinst.xml not being read or partial read with the installer prompting me over and over for the location of the xml answer file.

I need to play with it some more and then post a new thread if I can not make any headway...


Thanks to all for your input...