I read the two articles in Linux Magazine (January/February 2003) about Kickstarting Compute Nodes via the network. I read them several times and configured everything as specified, with the minor corrections that I have discovered when using Redhat 9 (I had some problems with PXE on a Dell 600SC system and a web search indicated that I needed to change a pmtu setting in /proc/sys/net/ipv4 and add a ?r blksize to the tftpboot settings in the /etc/xinetd.d/mtftp and tftp files). Everything now works as described in the article, however after a compute node loads the linux.0 (NBP), linux.1 (kernel), linux.2 (initrd) files (I watch them with tcpdump), it does not seem to try to pull the kickstart file that I specify in /etc/dhcpd.conf . The compute node always ends up loading the basic text-based install program and waiting at the ?Choose a language? section of the install process. It doesn?t read the settings that I have specified to automate the install via the kickstart file. If I go through the few text screens before getting to graphical install and specify the NFS server that I have setup as specified in the article, the install begins (so the NFS server is working). However, this obviously defeats the purpose of Kickstarting. I read somewhere online that if there is an error in the kickstart file, it will just load the default, screen-by-screen install program. I double/triple-checked my kickstart file, and I don?t see a problem (although the use of = signs seems to be inconsistent between redhat versions and their documentation). And as I alluded to earlier, I watch the process via tcpdump and I don?t see it even requesting the kickstart file. While trying to figure out what was happening via some web searches, I found out the following link that seems to describe the same problem (I think) http://www.redhat.com/archives/kickstart-list/2003-June/msg00009.html ; I'm not sure if anyone has experienced something like this or if the problem that I found in the link is what I am experiencing. Any ideas that can help or provide some sort of a workaround would be most appreciated. The potential is there to kickstart these nodes and automate installs, but it seems like I am a small tweak away from getting this working. If anyone would like to see any of my input files, let me know. It is a good article and I imagine it is going to turn out to be some sort of Redhat version thing, I'm just not sure what. Bob Colbert
