8.12. anaconda

Bug Fixes

BZ#734121

When users of IBM System z had the kdump package installed, the default kernel was set to kernel-kdump. However, the zIPL utility ignored the Kdump and debugged kernels when creating the zipl.conf file. Consequently, after updating the system, the newly-installed kernel was not set as the default entry in zipl.conf since the default kernel has been set to kernel-kdump. Now, if a kernel name includes “-kdump”, such a kernel is not set as default instead of the newly-installed kernel.

BZ#979163

Under certain circumstances, downloading of a kickstart file could fail due slow network initialization. To address this bug, a new GATEWAY_PING_TIMEOUT option has been added to the Network Manager. The option checks connectivity to the server before reporting a network interface as being connected. With this update, Anaconda has been modified to use this feature by the nicedelay boot option that can now be used in cases of very slow network initialization.

BZ#1001960

No major release version was written to the boot menu for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. As a consequence, after installing on a multi-boot system, it was not clear which Red Hat Enterprise Linux entry corresponded to which major version. The boot menu entry now contains the major version of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux release. For Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, this means there is the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 entry. Note that there is not the minor version number, such as 6.6. This is because there is currently no infrastructure to update the boot menu entry in place, so the entry would be incorrect after an upgrade.

BZ#1038001

When a bonding device was specified in the %pre section of a kickstart file and used with the %include kickstart option, Anaconda could not create the bond interface correctly. This update applies a patch to fix this bug and bonding interfaces are created as expected in the described scenario.

BZ#1039051

Previously, it was not possible to specify a local domain name by the kickstart network command. As a consequence, if a short host name was configured by the kickstart network --hostname option, name resolution of short names from local domain did not work properly in the Anaconda installer. A new --domain option for the network command has been added to address this bug.

BZ#1044716

When upgrading using Anaconda, it attempted to enable all swap devices listed in the /etc/fstab/ directory on the system. However, Anaconda did not check whether the swap devices existed. Consequently, non-existent swap devices listed in /etc/fstab/ caused errors to be returned during an upgrade. With this update, when Anaconda encounters such a device, it displays a dialog window allowing the user to either skip the device or abort the upgrade.

BZ#1046320

The --percent parameter was omitted in the output kickstart file, even if it was provided in the input kickstart file. As a consequence, the installation would be less reproducible using the output kickstart file. With this update, the kickstart code has been modified to not omit the --percent parameter from the output kickstart file.

BZ#1067857

Previously, Anaconda did not check the VLAN ID that was passed as a boot parameter. Therefore, Anaconda could not retrieve a kickstart file on an NFS volume over a VLAN interface, because a VLAN connection had not been established. This update modifies Anaconda to check the VLAN ID.

BZ#1123791

During installation, the /tmp/ size directory was always 250M. On systems with a large number of drives, large driver update disks, or a large number of repositories, /tmp/ space could be exhausted, causing the installation to terminate unexpectedly. With this update, 50% of memory is reserved for /tmp/ on systems with RAM greater than 512M, thus the installation proceeds correctly in the aforementioned scenario.

Enhancements

BZ#1081596

This update allows using the symbolic console device identifier for the cio_ignore kernel parameter in the generic.prm file for the IBM System z. Using this identifier prevents issues which may arise if no default console device number is available at installation time, or if the console device number is different from what was previously a hard-coded value in the generic.prm file. As a result, console devices using a different device identifier than what was previously hard-coded into the generic.prm file can be removed from the blacklist and made available for use.