Chapter 23. Installation

Due to a bug in the yaboot boot loader, upgrading from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 can fail on 64-bit PowerPC systems with an Unknown or corrupt filesystem error.

Under certain circumstances, searching for a Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) device causes a traceback error. To work around this problem, activate the required network device before entering the Storage spoke for the first time.

Upgrading Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 on IBM System z using the rhelup program causes the following error message to appear:

Error: Config file '/etc/zipl.conf': Line 9: section name '3.10.0-52.el7.s390x' already specified

This is because a kernel rescue image is installed during the upgrade using the same zIPL boot label as the new kernel image. Consequently, the zipl program does not update the boot loader because these duplicated entries exist in the /etc/zipl.conf file.

To work around this problem, edit the /etc/zipl.conf file and rename the label of the entry pointing to the kernel rescue image. Save the configuration file and run the zipl program again.

It is not possible to rescue a system by using an iSCSI disk; when starting anaconda in rescue mode on a system with an iSCSI disk, anaconda does not allow the user to connect to the disk.

The DASD= option in the CMS configuration file defines the Direct Access Storage Device (DASD) or a range of DASDs to configure during the installation. To indicate that no DASD is present, remove the option from the configuration file because specifying DASD=none is not valid.

It is not possible to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 from the installation DVD using the Hardware Management Console (HMC) on IBM System z architecture.

Direct Access Storage Devices (DASDs) that are formatted using the cpfmtxa utility are not used during the kickstart installation, even if the zerombr command is present in the kickstart file. To work around this problem, use the dasdfmt utility in the kickstart %pre section to format DASDs, for example:

%pre
dasdfmt -y -d cdl -b 4096 /dev/disk/by-path/ccw-0.0.3727
%end

The SUBCHANNELS= variable in the CMS configuration file provides required device bus IDs for the various network interfaces. On IBM System z architecture it is necessary to specify the IDs in lowercase, otherwise the installation program fails to configure the interfaces.

When installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 on UEFI-based systems, the Anaconda installer terminates unexpectedly with the following error:

BootLoaderError: failed to remove old efi boot entry

To work around this problem, edit the Install Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 option in the boot menu by pressing the e key and append the efi_no_storage_paranoia kernel parameter to the end of the line that begins with linuxefi. Then press the F10 key to boot the modified option and start installation.

It is not possible to use read-only disks as hard drive installation repository sources. When specifying the inst.repo=hd:device:path option ensure that device is writable.

Various platforms include BIOS or UEFI-assisted software RAID provided by LSI. This hardware requires the closed-source megasr driver, which is not included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Thus, platforms and adapters that depend on megasr are not supported by Red Hat. Also, the use of certain open-source RAID alternatives, such as the dmraid Disk Data Format 1 (DDF1) capability, is not currently supported on these systems.

However, on certain systems, such as IBM System x servers with the ServeRAID adapter, it is possible to disable the BIOS RAID function. To do this, enter the UEFI menu and navigate through the System Settings and Devices and I/O Ports submenus to the Configure the onboard SCU submenu. Then change the SCU setting from RAID to nonRAID. Save your changes and reboot the system. In this mode, the storage is configured using an open-source non-RAID LSI driver shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, such as mptsas, mpt2sas, or mpt3sas.

To obtain the megasr driver for IBM systems, refer to the IBM support page.

Certain Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) platforms are also impacted by this restriction. However, it is not possible to disable the BIOS RAID function on these systems. To obtain the megasr driver, refer to the Cisco support page.

Sometimes, when using the help command on the GRUB 2 command line (for example, help set or help ls), the command can become unresponsive or even cause the machine to reboot.

If Fedora 17 or later is installed on the system, the kernel uses a shared /boot partition. If the user then installs Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 which uses the same /boot partition, the latest kernel will be used by GRUB 2. That is, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 can use a Fedora kernel if this is later, resulting in certain modules to be limited or non-functioning (for example, sound or networking). To work around the problem, the correct kernel must be chosen manually.

On certain Intel systems, the following error message can appear on boot:

[   17.624504] ioapic: probe of 0000:00:05.4 failed with error -22
[   17.631700] ioapic: probe of 0000:80:05.4 failed with error -22

This message is harmless and does not affect the user.

When Btrfs volumes are allocated during automatic partitioning, there is not enough space to hold the swap partition as swap is a standard partition and cannot be split onto multiple disks. Consequently, an attempt to create Btrfs partitioning automatically on all direct access storage devices (DASDs) at once fails with the "not enough free space on disks" error message.

During installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 from a DVD ISO image stored on a disk, an exception is raised when the user tries to select a different ISO image. Consequently, the installation fails with a traceback. To work around this problem, do not try to modify the installation source when the hard disk source has been specified on the kernel command line.

Under some circumstances, installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 on the unified extensible firmware interface (UEFI) causes the anaconda utility to report the following error message:

BootLoaderError: failed to remove old efi boot entry

Installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 on IBM System z fails if encryption and auto-partitioning is used. To work around this problem, the user can use the custom partitioning screen to create desired partitioning layout and encrypt any mount points except for the /boot mount point. As a result, the partitioning is accepted by the anaconda utility and the installation finishes successfully.

A system with an encrypted partition does not always ask for the password to unlock the encrypted partition during boot, which causes the boot process to fail. To work around this problem, reboot the system.

When auto-partitioning with standard partitions is used while installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 in the virt-manager utility, the installation fails with a "format create" error message.

When booting in rescue mode on IBM System z architecture, the second and third rescue screens in the rescue shell are incomplete and not displayed properly.

On IBM System z machines, if the /boot sector is a logical volume that extends across more than one physical volume, and the system uses direct access storage devices (DASDs) of differing sizes, installation of bootloader fails. To work around this problem, keep /boot small enough so that it does not extend beyond a single physical volume. Alternatively, do not use LVM for/boot.

If the system is installed from a removable medium, and an install or storage option is selected but then changed, the installation fails. Consequently, it is not possible to reconsider decisions made during the installation process. To work around this problem, avoid accepting and then changing storage decisions if using removable install media.

On systems that use the zipl bootloader, the >bootloader --boot-drive value from the anaconda kickstart file is ignored. Consequently, the boot drive is chosen by zipl regardless of the kickstart configuration. As a result, there may be a discrepancy between the --boot-drive value in kickstart file and the actual drive on which the bootloader is located. This problem applies for both manually and automatically created kickstart files.

On IBM System z machines, if the zipl.conf configuration file contains a kernel parameter line that exceeds 896 bytes, installation of bootloader fails due to a hardware limitation of the byte length. Consequently, the Anaconda installer terminates with an error message indicating a problem in the bootloader installation. To work around this problem, keep the kernel parameter list's size to a minimum. For example, choose short names for volume groups when using the Logical Volume Manager (LVM) or specify a range of direct access storage devices (DASDs) instead of listing them individually.

Network devices are not automatically enabled during installation unless the installation method requires network connectivity. As a consequence, a traceback error can occur during Kickstart installation due to inactive network devices. To work around this problem, set the ksdevice=link option on boot or add the --device=link option to the ks.cfg file to enable network devices with active links during Kickstart installation.

If the kernel-debug package is installed, it is made the default boot entry in the GRUB boot loader, which is unexpected behavior. To work around this problem, do not install the kernel-debug package as a part of the Anaconda installation, but install kernel-debug using the yum utility after the system is set up. As a result, the default boot entry boots the default kernel as expected.

Under certain rare circumstances, the anaconda installer does not interact correctly with yum and returns an error with no exception set. Since this problem occurs rarely, reattempt the installation to work around this problem. Alternatively, use the text mode installation, where this bug does not occur.

The source code does not handle booting on a bnx2i iSCI driver correctly. As a consequence, when installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, the server does not reboot automatically after the installation is completed. No workaround is currently available.

The anaconda installer does not correctly handle adding of FCoE disks. As a consequence, adding FCoE disks on the anaconda advance storage page fails with the following error message:

No Fibre Channel Forwarders or VN2VN Responders Found

To work around this problem, simply repeat the steps to add the FCoE disks; the configuration process produces the correct outcome when repeated. Alternatively, run the lldpad -d command in the anaconda shell before adding the FCoE disks in the anaconda user interface to avoid the described problem.