RH403: PXE Provisioning Kernel Panic

[Juerg]

Hi everyone,

I'm just completing the RH403 course. I bumped into an issue in sections 9.8 and 9.9, PXE provisioning. All the configuration on the satellite went through smoothly, and when I rebooted serverc or serverd respecively, the systems started boot using PXE. Kernel and Initrd are loaded, but after extracting the initrd I get a kernel panic. Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception is the exact message. Unfortunately I can't scroll back in the terminal to see the last step it tried to do. My guess is that there is a problem mounting the filesystems.

Is this a known issue with this lab? It also happened on the Lab in section 9.9 and also 10.2.

I've attached a screenshot from the console.

Anyone? Thanks and regards,

Juerg

[Ranmsés]

Just tested with RHEL 7.2 media that is also available on content.example.com and the installation process did work as expected until the end.

[Ashish_Lingayat]

Hi all,

If you are facing kernel panic issue in RH403 please raise a support ticket with Learner Experience team since the issue was resolved and the same was updated to respective customers.

Raise a ticket on access.redhat.com as the team will be able to track your progress and assist more promptly.

Regards,

Ashish Lingayat

[FlorinM]

Hi,

Same issue here, 5 months later. I don't want to comment further.

Regards,

Florin Manole

[eemjaybee]

Wondering if anyone can confirm or deny from actual experience if this is still a problem or not ? I am getting what seem to be similar symptoms having rebuilt the environment a number of times. 

Yes I have a logged a support ticket (yesterday). And I have an exam in two days. Would be nice to know if I am doing something wrong before then.

[ricardodacosta]

I’ve delivered RH403VT recently, and RH403ILT in the last year and I haven’t had these problems. I know of other instructors who have had hassles.

Verify that the manifest files have the expected checksums. Especially if you’re using pdm to download courseware.

Which kickstart tree are you using?

Sent from a mobile phone. Please excuse poor punctuation, grammar, and brevity.

[eemjaybee]

Thank you for your very quick response Ricardo.

I won't take any more of your time, it looks like Florin Manole (above) has answered my question (I hadn't refreshed this page since I logged the support call yesterday).

I'll get back to prepping the other material and will provide an update here from the support call (probably after my exam).

[FlorinM]

Hi Ricardo,

I am a bit confused after reading your answer. I am also referring to the RH403 Video Course. In the training's guided exercises and laboratories the kickstart trees are not based on the "Red Hat Repositories" that become available once you import the manifest although this method is mentioned in the student guide.  But it would require some additional steps and access to the directory where the content of the Content ISOs was copied. The directory is located on the "classroom" system to which the students don't have access.  Browsing to Content > Red Hat Subscriptions > Kickstarts tab > Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Server (Kickstart), the message is "No repositories accessible. Check that Red Hat Subsciptions have been imported".

Instead a custom product is created, a repository is generated using repository discovery, from http://content.example.com and the rhel7.1/x86_64/dvd URL and the installation media that relies on the synced DVD is used.

Do you have any hint what I should check related with the discovered repositoy, installation media, operating system, etc?

By the way, keep up the good work and enthusiasm!

Florin Manole

[eemjaybee]

Yah !  Without any further details Red Hat support responded with "We have changed the datacenter from the previous one,please delete the current lab environment and provision a new lab so that new DC gets assigned to your lab environment." So I deleted lab and now it works.

Kudos to Ricardo for reacting so quickly (obviously a true Red Hatter :-) ) and to Redhat Support for resolving pretty quickly.

Overall pretty frustrating when you are trying to learn a new skill and to hit a 'known problem'. Is there an 'errata' for the training course materials ?

[FlorinM]

Hi, 

A short update: I've raised a ticket and the guys from Red Hat Support solved the issue. All I had to do was to re-provision the lab.

Regards,

Florin M.