Kickstart problems: network install fails

[Net Llama!]

On Sat, 24 Feb 2007, Chong Yu Meng wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm trying out a kickstart install with the kickstart configuration file
> and the repository for the installation files hosted on a web server.
> I'm not having much success right now -- the client machine is able to
> grab the kickstart configuration file from the web server, but then the
> process terminates with an error "Unable to retrieve" followed by the
> URL of the web server. I did a tail on the web server's access and error
> logs, and it appears as if the client machine does not even issue a
> request to the web server! No 404 error, no incoming request at all.
>
> This is strange because in the logs I can see that the client machine
> was able to grab the kickstart configuration file, which leads me to
> think that it is unlikely to be a network issue. Googling this problem
> only brought up one hit that seemed to describe my problem: a forum
> entry that was received no replies.

Are you sure that you don't have any errors in the kickstart file itself? 
Can you test it with a different system just to see if you can get past 
this point of failure?

>
> There is one (very remote) possibility it could be a driver problem: the
> client machine has a dual port Broadcom Gigabit NIC integrated into the
> mainboard. I disabled one of the ports in the BIOS, but I found a
> strange thing: both ports actually share the same MAC address!

That's very bad.

>
> Has anyone else seen this before? I'm using Scientific Linux 4.4 and the
> hardware is a IBM x306m 1U rackmount server.

I've similar reports in the past that turned out to be BIOS bugs.


-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lonni J Friedman                        netllama at linux-sxs.org
LlamaLand				http://netllama.linux-sxs.org