Red Hat Summit Red Hat SummitSupportConsoleDevelopersStart a trialContact

Chapter 4. Troubleshoot Bare Metal Provisioning

The following sections contain information and steps that may be useful for diagnosing issues in a Bare Metal Provisioning setup.

Bare Metal Provisioning with inspection uses four services: openstack-ironic-api, openstack-ironic-conductor, openstack-ironic-inspector, and openstack-ironic-inspector-dnsmasq. Logs for most OpenStack components can be found in the /var/log directory.

4.1. Troubleshoot PXE Boot Errors
Copy link

Permission Denied Errors

If you are getting a permission denied error on the console of your Bare Metal Provisioning node, make sure you applied the appropriate SELinux content to the /httpboot and /tftpboot directories as follows: 

# semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_content_t "/httpboot(/.*)?"
# semanage fcontext -a -t tftpdir_t "/tftpboot(/.*)?"
Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

Boot Process Freezes at /pxelinux.cfg/XX-XX-XX-XX-XX-XX

On the console of your node, if it looks like you are getting an IP address and then the process stops as shown below:

PXE Process Freezes During Boot

This indicates that you might be using the wrong PXE boot template in your ironic.conf file. 

# grep ^pxe_config_template ironic.conf
pxe_config_template=$pybasedir/drivers/modules/ipxe_config.template
Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

The default template is pxe_config.template, so it is easy to miss the i to turn this into ipxe_config.template.

When you try to log in at the login prompt on the console of the node with the root password that you set in the configurations steps, but are not able to, it indicates you are not booted in to the deployed image. You are probably stuck in the deploy-kernel/deploy-ramdisk image and the system has yet to get the correct image.

To fix this issue, verify the PXE Boot Configuration file in the /httpboot/pxelinux.cfg/MAC_ADDRESS on the Compute or Bare Metal Provisioning node and ensure that all the IP addresses listed in this file correspond to IP addresses on the Bare Metal Provisioning Network.

Note

The only network the Bare Metal Provisioning node knows about is the Bare Metal Provisioning Network. If one of the endpoints is not on the network, the endpoint will not be able to reach the Bare Metal Provisioning node as a part of the boot process.

For example, the kernel line in your file is as follows: 

kernel http://192.168.200.2:8088/5a6cdbe3-2c90-4a90-b3c6-85b449b30512/deploy_kernel selinux=0 disk=cciss/c0d0,sda,hda,vda iscsi_target_iqn=iqn.2008-10.org.openstack:5a6cdbe3-2c90-4a90-b3c6-85b449b30512 deployment_id=5a6cdbe3-2c90-4a90-b3c6-85b449b30512 deployment_key=VWDYDVVEFCQJNOSTO9R67HKUXUGP77CK ironic_api_url=http://192.168.200.2:6385 troubleshoot=0 text nofb nomodeset vga=normal boot_option=netboot ip=${ip}:${next-server}:${gateway}:${netmask} BOOTIF=${mac}  ipa-api-url=http://192.168.200.2:6385 ipa-driver-name=pxe_ssh boot_mode=bios initrd=deploy_ramdisk coreos.configdrive=0 || goto deploy
Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
Expand
Value in the above example kernel lineCorresponding information

http://192.168.200.2:8088

Parameter http_url in /etc/ironic/ironic.conf file. This IP address must be on the Bare Metal Provisioning Network.

5a6cdbe3-2c90-4a90-b3c6-85b449b30512

UUID of the baremetal node in ironic node-list.

deploy_kernel

This is the deploy kernel image in the Image service that is copied down as /httpboot/<NODE_UUID>/deploy_kernel.

http://192.168.200.2:6385

Parameter api_url in /etc/ironic/ironic.conf file. This IP address must be on the Bare Metal Provisioning Network.

pxe_ssh

The IPMI Driver in use by the Bare Metal Provisioning service for this node.

deploy_ramdisk

This is the deploy ramdisk image in the Image service that is copied down as /httpboot/<NODE_UUID>/deploy_ramdisk.

If any of these values do not correspond between the /httpboot/pxelinux.cfg/MAC_ADDRESS and the ironic.conf file, you need to update them in the ironic.conf file and restart the Bare Metal Provisioning service and then re-deploy the Bare Metal Provisioning node.

If your Bare Metal Provisioning system is not getting the right hostname, it means that cloud-init is failing. To fix this, connect the Bare Metal Provisioning subnet to a router in the OpenStack Networking service. The requests to the meta-data agent should now be routed correctly.

If you are having trouble authenticating to the Identity service, check the identity_uri parameter in the ironic.conf file and make sure you remove the /v2.0 from the keystone AdminURL. For example, identity_uri should be set to http://IP:PORT.

4.5. Troubleshoot Hardware Enrollment
Copy link

Issues with enrolled hardware can be caused by incorrect node registration details. Ensure that property names and values have been entered correctly. Incorrect or mistyped property names will be successfully added to the node’s details, but will be ignored.

Update a node’s details. This example updates the amount of memory the node is registered to use to 2 GB: 

# ironic node-update NODE_UUID replace properties/memory_mb=2048
Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

4.6. Troubleshoot No Valid Host Errors
Copy link

If the Compute scheduler cannot find a suitable Bare Metal Provisioning node on which to boot an instance, a NoValidHost error can be seen in /var/log/nova/nova-conductor.log or immediately upon launch failure in the dashboard. This is usually caused by a mismatch between the resources Compute expects and the resources the Bare Metal Provisioning node provides.

  1. Check the hypervisor resources that are available: 

    # nova hypervisor-stats
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

    The resources reported here should match the resources that the Bare Metal Provisioning nodes provide.

  2. Check that Compute recognizes the Bare Metal Provisioning nodes as hypervisors: 

    # nova hypervisor-list
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

    The nodes, identified by UUID, should appear in the list.

  3. Check the details for a Bare Metal Provisioning node: 

    # ironic node-list
# ironic node-show NODE_UUID
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

    Verify that the node’s details match those reported by Compute.

  4. Check that the selected flavor does not exceed the available resources of the Bare Metal Provisioning nodes: 

    nova flavor-show FLAVOR_NAME
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

  5. Check the output of ironic node-list to ensure that Bare Metal Provisioning nodes are not in maintenance mode. Remove maintenance mode if necessary: 

    # ironic node-set-maintenance NODE_UUID off
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

  6. Check the output of ironic node-list to ensure that Bare Metal Provisioning nodes are in an available state. Move the node to available if necessary: 

    # ironic node-set-provision-state NODE_UUID provide
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

4.7. Troubleshoot Hardware Inspection
Copy link

Hardware inspection can fail on Bare Metal Provisioning nodes in the available provision state.

  1. Check the provision state for all nodes: 

    # ironic node-list
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

  2. Move a node from available to manageable before starting inspection: 

    # ironic node-set-provision-state NODE_UUID manage
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap
Back to top
Red Hat logoGithubredditYoutubeTwitter

Learn

Try, buy, & sell

Communities

About Red Hat Documentation

We help Red Hat users innovate and achieve their goals with our products and services with content they can trust. Explore our recent updates.

Making open source more inclusive

Red Hat is committed to replacing problematic language in our code, documentation, and web properties. For more details, see the Red Hat Blog.

About Red Hat

We deliver hardened solutions that make it easier for enterprises to work across platforms and environments, from the core datacenter to the network edge.

Theme

© 2025 Red Hat