Hi all,

what is the correct procedure to do xcat osimage provisioning with
customized kernel, initrd (and kcmdline)?

I am on xcat 2.11 on SLES for SAP Applications 11.4 on IBM Power (ppc64),
trying to do provisioning of the same OS to LPARs of the same architecture.

According to
http://xcat-docs.readthedocs.org/en/2.11/guides/admin-guides/references/man7/osimage.7.html
the following should do the trick:
"boottarget (linuximage.boottarget)
    The name of the boottarget definition. When this attribute is set, xCAT
will use the kernel, initrd and kernel params defined in the boottarget
definition instead of the default."

Trying to implement this, I just don't manage to get it working:

ismgp92:~ # lsdef -t osimage myimage
Object name: myimage
    boottarget=mytarget
    imagetype=linux
    osarch=ppc64
    osdistroname=sles11sp4sap-ppc64
    osname=Linux
    osvers=sles11sp4sap
    otherpkgdir=/install/post/otherpkgs/sles11sp4sap/ppc64
    pkgdir=/install/repos/sles11sp4sap/ppc64
    pkglist=/opt/xcat/share/xcat/install/sles/compute.pkglist
    profile=compute
    provmethod=install
    template=/opt/xcat/share/xcat/install/sles/compute.tmpl

ismgp92:~ # tabdump boottarget
#bprofile,kernel,initrd,kcmdline,comments,disable
"mytarget","/install/repos/sles11sp4sap/ppc64/1/suseboot/linux64","/install/repos/sles11sp4sap/ppc64/1/suseboot/initrd64",,,

ismgp92:~ # nodeset test880m osimage=myimage
test880m: install sles11sp4sap-ppc64-compute

I would expect this to create a yaboot.conf file which will use linux64 and
initrd64 as specified in boottarget mytarget.
Instead of that, the generated yaboot.conf will boot kernel inst64 (not
linux64) and no initrd at all; xcat completely ignores my boottarget
specifications:

ismgp92:~ # cat /tftpboot/yaboot.conf-<MACaddr>
#install sles11sp4sap-ppc64-compute
timeout=5
image=xcat/osimage/myimage/inst64
        label=xcat
        append="quiet
autoyast=http://<Server>:<Port>/install/autoinst/test880m
install=http://<Server>:<Port>/install/repos/sles11sp4sap/ppc64/1
netdevice=<MACaddr>  dhcptimeout=150"


After manually copying linux64 and initrd64 to /tftpboot
and /tftpboot/xcat/osimage/myimage I also sequentially tried each of the
following boottargets:
"mytarget","xcat/osimage/myimage/linux64","xcat/osimage/myimage/initrd64",,,
"mytarget","/tftpboot/xcat/osimage/myimage/linux64","/tftpboot/xcat/osimage/myimage/initrd64",,,
"mytarget","/tftpboot/linux64","/tftpboot/initrd64",,,
"mytarget","linux64","initrd64",,,

The resulting yaboot.conf file was always the same as above.

I also tried assigning the node to my boottarget via the nodetype table as
documented in
http://sourceforge.net/p/xcat/wiki/BootTarget/
http://sourceforge.net/p/xcat/wiki/XCAT_vSMP_Foundation/

Again, the same result as above.

What is the correct way to assign specific kernel, initrd and kcmdline to a
node's netboot?
Any help would be highly appreciated.


Some words on my reasons for the above:

On my ppc64 hardware, yaboot fails to TFTP download files larger than 32MB.
inst64 as provided by the original SLES 11.4 DVD (which is also used by
xcat) is 34MB in size and therefore netbooting this kernel fails.
The same DVD utilizes a yaboot.cnf which uses a kernel and initrd to boot,
where each of the two files is smaller than 32MB:
image[64bit]=linux64
  label=install
  append="quiet sysrq=1 insmod=sym53c8xx insmod=ipr            "
  initrd=initrd64

Running nodeset and then manually editing linux64, initrd64 and kernel
parametrs into yaboot.conf leads to a successful netboot of the LPAR.
I just would like to have xcat insert these details into yaboot.conf
instead of vi.

Also, I would like to setup another osimage to netboot a SLES rescue
environment utilizing the kernel parameter rescue=1.



Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Kind regards

Michael Bausch

IT Specialist
GTS Infrastructure Services Delivery DACH
Server and SAP Infrastructure Services
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71139 Ehningen
Germany
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