General Question

Support
1

Problem: Hi I am currently on 3.17.2 and I am able to get the default Debian 13 Trixie vms booted repeatedly with the default Debian Preseed templates to provision VMs in a Hyper-V cluster (not using compute resources since it is not supported), however, I am having a hard time getting the default Kickstart templates to provision a VM. Is there something like extra custom configuration that is required?

Expected outcome: A booted basic vm nothing special (i’m not looking for anything special I just want to boot a CentOS-Stream-10 VM using the default kickstart templates)

Foreman and Proxy versions: 3.17.2

Foreman and Proxy plugin versions:
Version: 3.17.2
API Version: v2
Database:
Status: ok
Server Response: Duration: 0ms
Plugins:

  1. Name: foreman-tasks
    Version: 11.0.6
  2. Name: foreman_ansible
    Version: 17.0.2
  3. Name: foreman_discovery
    Version: 26.1.1
  4. Name: foreman_puppet
    Version: 9.1.0
  5. Name: foreman_remote_execution
    Version: 16.3.1
  6. Name: foreman_templates
    Version: 10.0.10
    Smart Proxies:
  7. Name: dcvmsrv210.dobcomed.local
    Version: 3.17.2
    Status: ok
    Features:
    1. Name: dynflow
      Version: 0.9.4
    2. Name: ansible
      Version: 3.6.1
    3. Name: discovery
      Version: 1.0.5
    4. Name: script
      Version: 0.11.7
    5. Name: tftp
      Version: 3.17.2
    6. Name: dhcp
      Version: 3.17.2
    7. Name: puppetca
      Version: 3.17.2
    8. Name: puppet
      Version: 3.17.2
    9. Name: logs
      Version: 3.17.2
      Compute Resources:

**Distribution and version: **
PRETTY_NAME=“Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)”
NAME=“Debian GNU/Linux”
VERSION_ID=“12”
VERSION=“12 (bookworm)”
VERSION_CODENAME=bookworm
ID=debian
HOME_URL=“https://www.debian.org/”
SUPPORT_URL=“ Debian -- User Support ”
BUG_REPORT_URL=“I Challenge Thee

Other relevant data:

2

There should not be anything “special” required. You need an operatingsystem configured with the correct templates associated and a configured installation medium with the right associations.Then it “should just work”.

Do you see any specific error messages or what causes the “hard time” to get it working?

3

When I provision the VM I can get the default plymouth splash screen after the GRUB2 boot menu provides me the option to install via the Kickstart default selection. After that it goes through like it is going to continue with the install but shuts down before I can even read what is on the console screen. Is there some place I can look for logs other than “/var/log/foreman-proxy/proxy.log“ and “/var/log/foreman/production.log“ because I am not seeing any details there other than the provisioning token was successfully provided and that the dhcp ip is properly leased.

4

Also I am using the Kickstart Default, the Kickstart default PXEGrub2, the Kickstart default user data, and the Kickstart default finish templates.

5

That is an unexpected behavior and sounds like something could be wrong with the kickstart.

You could go to the host page for the host and check the rendered kickstart template to see if it looks sane or if it already throws an error during rendering. The installation process itself does not really log anything on the Foreman side, so you would need to somehow find error messages on the host that should be installed.

6

image
image927×675 133 KB

I was able to snag a pic before it shut down

7

To me, that looks like the system is having trouble downloading the installer image (or more specifically, the initramfs).
With the “failed writing output to destination” error, the first thing that comes to mind is: Do you have enough RAM in your target host? If I remember correctly, the netboot installer for EL Systems nowadays requires at least 4GB of RAM in the system you want to install.
Next thing I would check would be if the Installation Medium is properly configured and (if you are using a locally hosted one) if it might be corrupted.
Last thing that comes to mind is: Try downloading the installer files yourself via curl or similar from the installation medium path, ideally under the same network conditions as the host you are trying to install. Maybe there is some firewall problem going on or something is misconfigured on the Foreman end.

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8

It was the ram thank you so much! I would have never thought. I always set debian systems to 2048 by default so I just imagined it would be the same.

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