Ubuntu 22.04 Autoinstall issues foreman 3.13

jimmy · January 15, 2025, 9:35pm

Problem: Unable to boot into ubuntu 22.04 installer

Expected outcome: boot/ubuntu-22-04-vmlinuz loads installer

Foreman and Proxy versions: 3.12.0

Foreman and Proxy plugin versions: 3.12.0

Distribution and version: Ubuntu 22.04

I am trying to provision bare metal hosts but I am having a very hard time getting this to work with the ubuntu autoinstall method. We had no issues with earlier ubuntu versions.

I am using the following documentation. I’d like to note that as seen above I am on version 3.12.0 but the documentation for this process seems to be non-existent for any version above 3.5. So I am using the 3.5 documentation:

https://docs.theforeman.org/3.5/Provisioning_Hosts/index-katello.html#Provisioning_Ubuntu_Autoinstall_Through_Smart_Proxies_provisioning

“To provision Ubuntu 22.04, you need to provide both the ISO image and the extracted ISO image on your Foreman server.”

I have followed the steps necessary to provision Ubuntu 22.04 and I have provided both the ISO image and extracted image on my foreman server. I repeated these steps for the smart proxy as well.

I updated the installation media path

http://my-foreman-master.acme.com/pub/installation_media/ubuntu/22.04-x86_64/

After I PXE boot the host into discovery then start the build I get the follow error:

Loading boot/ubuntu-22-04-foreman-$somehash-vmlinuz… failed: No such file or directory

I am not sure what I am missing exactly. I have tried all sorts of tweaks and template changes and I am unable to fix this issue at this point.

Let me know what information you need in order to help resolve this issue. We have multiple masters in different regions and each has a smart-proxy associated with it. The proxies are in the configuration as trust proxies. Which I had to verify by checking /etc/foreman/settings.yaml.

What should I check next to get me over this hurdle?

Thank you in advance.

jimmy · January 17, 2025, 5:12pm

I believe this should be trying to load vmlinuz/initrd from casper/ instead of /boot.

jimmy · January 21, 2025, 4:55pm

Can anyone help with this?

The issue I am seeing is the template for preseed default PXELinux auto install is rendering the path to boot/vmlinuz and boot/initrd when it should be casper. I have the OS set to 22.04.5 which should point it to casper.

github.com

theforeman/foreman/blob/develop/app/views/unattended/provisioning_templates/PXELinux/preseed_default_pxelinux_autoinstall.erb

<%#
kind: PXELinux
name: Preseed default PXELinux Autoinstall
model: ProvisioningTemplate
oses:
- ubuntu
test_on:
- ubuntu_autoinst4dhcp
-%>
#
# This file was deployed via '<%= template_name %>' template
#
# Supported host/hostgroup parameters:
#
# blacklist = module1, module2
#   Blacklisted kernel modules
#
# lang = en_US
#   System locale
#

This file has been truncated. show original

On the other hand Preseed default iPXE autoinstall does use casper/. I am completely confused here.

maximilian · January 22, 2025, 12:45pm

The docs are still present for Foreman+Katello nightly: Provisioning Ubuntu autoinstall through Smart Proxies. Additionally, you may have a look at Creating an installation medium for Ubuntu 22.04.

jimmy · January 22, 2025, 2:29pm

I’ve followed all the steps in Creating an installation medium for Ubuntu 22.04 but I still get no such file or directory. I can provide snippets of configuration or whatever is needed. I’ve been stuck on this for days at this point

jimmy · January 22, 2025, 4:10pm

I’ve extracted the ISO to an external system we manage and updated my installation link to use that and now it works properly so we’ll use that instead. We can consider this issue closed.