Autoyasting a GX-270

It's very odd. Our initial boot iso does not allow autoyast to install suse on a GX-270 (or other machine with an E1000 adapter). The problem is the dhcpcd client fails when attempting to get an IP address, and so the installation process grinds to a halt.

I did find a solution. The problem turned out to be that the dhcpcd client took about 45 seconds to get an IP address with the e1000 driver and the linuxrc boot-strap timed out when trying to get an IP address via dhcp.

To correct this, I needed to modify the linuxrc.config in the initial ramdisk on the boot media. Gunzip boot/loader/initrd, mount it via loop back (mount -o loop initrd /mnt), then edit the file linuxrc.config in the root of the ram disk. Adding the line: DHCPTimeout: 120 fixed the problem. When done, I unmounted the initrd, re-gzipped it, and copied it back to /boot/loader on the cd hierarchy. Then, I created another iso using the "make-boot-iso.sh" script file.

I also needed to patch the file /usr/sbin/dhcpcd-test. The dhcpcd-test script uses a 10 second timeout by default, but this is not long enough for the e1000. A 60 second timeout (dhcpcd -t 60) works perfectly though.

/usr/sbin/dhcpcd-test is located in the rpm dhcpcd-1.3.22p14-100.i586.rpm. I grabbed the source rpm off of the dvd, installed it, and modified the script. Then I used the included spec file to rebuild the rpm. Once the rpm was rebuilt with my changes, I copied it into our nfs repository and let it go from there.

The rest of this document describes the steps I took to work around this problem before fixing the initrd.

However, if you set it up to manually install, it'll work. Here are the steps that work with a GX-270 in order.

  • Boot the cd, select "autoinstallation."
  • Let the autoinstall fail, you will be prompted with "Activating manual setup program."
  • Say, "OK"
  • Select "English" for the language
  • Select "English (US)" for the keyboard layout
  • Select "Start Installation / System"
  • Select "Start Installation / Update"
  • Choose "Network" under "Source Medium"
  • Choose "NFS" for the network protocol
  • When prompted "Automatic configuration via DHCP" select "Yes" (BTW, I have no idea why this works here, but not during the autoyast installation earlier)
  • Hit [ENTER] when prompted "Please enter IP Address of NFS Server"
  • Hit [ENTER] when prompted "Please enter directory of server"
  • The YAST installer will come up and prompt you to "Load USB-Storage," say "Yes."
  • The YAST installer will then ask you to "Load lvm-mod," say "Yes."

    • After the installation of the first CD, yast reboots. This is a normal part of the suse installation. BUT, on the GX-270 you will be prompted with "Yast will configure the Network Card" prompt after the reboot. Select "configure" and then the entire process will continue as normal.

    Everything else will then proceed as normal. Don't ask me why, I'll investigate it more when I have a chance.

    Ken Sallot, 12/4/2003