PXE-less discovery fails to kexec on VMWare

Unable to complete provisioning Centos 7.4 using FDI image on vmware workstation.(guest name :mac000c29ba1add.mylabs.local)

VM Guest hung after—> fdi smart-proxy: /usr/sbin/kexec: unrecognized option ‘–args-linux’

foreman version version 1.16.0
fdi-bootable-3.4.4.iso
foreman_discovery plugin version 10.0.0

logs from VM guest.(ssh enabled on Guest VM)

production log

please help.

Can you remove this line:

or change it to:

"extra": []

Report back please, this might be important bug. IMHO kexec does not work in 1.16 due to this flag.

removed line 49.“extra”: ["–args-linux"]

task failed with the following error https://pastebin.com/PmrKH6VF

Below result when change it “extra”: []

Feb 16 11:51:15 fdi foreman-proxy[1487]: [1774] 2018-02-16 11:51:15 URL:http://mirror.centos.org/centos/7.4.1708/os/x86_64/images/pxeboot/vmlinuz [5877760/5877760] -> “/tmp/vmlinuz” [1]
Feb 16 11:51:46 fdi foreman-proxy[1487]: [1777] 2018-02-16 11:51:46 URL:http://mirror.centos.org/centos/7.4.1708/os/x86_64/images/pxeboot/initrd.img [48434768/48434768] -> “/tmp/initrd.img” [1]
Feb 16 11:51:46 fdi foreman-proxy[1487]: 192.168.180.100 - - [16/Feb/2018:11:51:46 +0000] “PUT /power/kexec HTTP/1.1” 200 15 35.0739
Feb 16 11:51:46 fdi smart-proxy: 192.168.180.100 - - [16/Feb/2018:11:51:11 UTC] “PUT /power/kexec HTTP/1.1” 200 15
Feb 16 11:51:46 fdi smart-proxy: - -> /power/kexec
packet_write_wait: Connection to 192.168.180.134 port 22: Broken pipe

and VM hung

In the first case, you had a JSON typo (comma).

In the second case, I am unable to tell what’s wrong. You need to try to follow system journal.

I suggest to try to kexec manually:

cd /tmp
wget http://mirror.centos.org/centos/7.4.1708/os/x86_64/images/pxeboot/vmlinuz
wget http://mirror.centos.org/centos/7.4.1708/os/x86_64/images/pxeboot/initrd.img
kexec -d -l kernel --initrd=initram.img --append="ks=http://foreman.mylabs.local/unattended/provision?token=55e70c52-0a43-49c8-b590-7562fc24f7c4&static=yes inst.ks.sendmac ip=192.168.180.134::192.168.180.2:255.255.255.0:::none nameserver=192.168.180.2 ksdevice=bootif BOOTIF=00-00-0c-29-ba-1a-dd nomodeset"

The -d (debug) flag should do some verbose output.

HI Lukas,

I am facing similar issue, it stop at this

Following is the output i run with debug mode:

The screenshot shows you are using VESA/FB extensions, can you boot the FDI in 80x25 mode without any special graphics options? Is this BIOS or UEFI?

hi Shri,

I had similar behavior with a fork of foreman. You could find why the reboot attempt fails by checking the proxy.log(/var/log/foreman-proxy/proxy.log

In my case the foreman host wasn’t able to run the kexec on remote host due to firewall restriction, this is evident from the following proxy log snipper.


2019-12-09T06:00:25 eb8083cd [I] Started PUT /10.10.10.10/power/reboot
2019-12-09T06:01:25 0ff854ac [I] Started PUT /10.10.10.10/power/reboot
2019-12-09T06:02:33 eb8083cd [E] Connection timed out - connect(2)
2019-12-09T06:02:33 eb8083cd [I] Finished PUT /10.10.10.10/power/reboot with 500 (127304.51 ms)
2019-12-09T06:03:33 0ff854ac [E] Connection timed out - connect(2)
2019-12-09T06:03:33 0ff854ac [I] Finished PUT /10.10.10.10/power/reboot with 500 (127280.84 ms)


After the firewall change, the kexec was successful.

Note: Please ignore if this is not the case :slight_smile:

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