[fedora-arm] Cubieboard2 kickstart (finally PXE) installation

[Tomasz Urbański]

Hi,
Let me ask some question:
1) What is the relationship between u-boot, syslinux/extlinux, grub in
installation process of F21 on ARM boxes? (I see elements of all this
environments on the installation image.)
2) Does the u-boot bootloader recognizes full set of extlinux.conf options?
3) How to build extlinux.conf & ks.cfg to perform fully automatic
installation on Cubieboard2?

Background:
My goal is to configure some Cubieboard2 (Allwinner A20 SoC) boxes to
perform fully automatic installation from PXE server (FOG).
I've done my best to get familiar with contents of:
1) Fedora ARM Installation Procedure
<http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/F21/Installation>
2) u-boot & syslinux change in F21
<http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/u-boot_syslinux>
3) linux-sunxi Mainline U-boot <http://linux-sunxi.org/Mainline_U-boot>
4) Vanilla U-Boot <http://www.denx.de/wiki/U-Boot>
5) ExtLinux <http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/EXTLINUX>
6) Recent post #1
<https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/arm/2014-December/008787.html>
7) Recent post #2
<https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/arm/2015-January/008880.html>
and now .... I have a mess in my head. :-)

I have divided the "project" into few stages.

At the current stage, I try to build a local automatic installation. (Local
only, ie. from miniSD, without potential network difficulties.) So, I try
to construct extlinux.conf/grub.conf and anaconda kickstart file that will
be able to perform fully automatic installation.

Here is my extlinux.conf file:

ui menu.c32
menu autoboot Welcome to Fedora-Minimal-armhfp-21-5. Automatic boot in #
second{,s}. Press a key for options.
menu title Fedora-Minimal-armhfp-21-5 Boot Options.
menu hidden
timeout 20
totaltimeout 600

label Fedora-Minimal-armhfp-21-5 (3.17.4-301.fc21.armv7hl)
kernel /vmlinuz-3.17.4-301.fc21.armv7hl
append ro root=UUID=e098e36f-f409-44cb-9d8e-9d5c0e2ed9c9
fdtdir /dtb-3.17.4-301.fc21.armv7hl/
initrd /initramfs-3.17.4-301.fc21.armv7hl.img
inst.ks=hd:sdb1:/ks.cfg
label Just to show the extlinux.conf is read
kernel /vmlinuz-3.17.4-301.fc21.armv7hl
append ro root=UUID=e098e36f-f409-44cb-9d8e-9d5c0e2ed9c9
fdtdir /dtb-3.17.4-301.fc21.armv7hl/
initrd /initramfs-3.17.4-301.fc21.armv7hl.img

First, I see that extlinux.conf file is (at least partially) processed, as
the additional label is reflected in options proposed during installation
process. But it seems that the option inst.ks=hd:sdb1:/ks.cfg is ignored.

My /ks.cfg differs from generated by anaconda in only one line. I changed
timezone into Europe/Warsaw. And I see that anaconda still asks me to
choose timezone (with exclamation mark indicating lack of choice).

Furthermore, when I read the Recent post #2
<https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/arm/2015-January/008880.html>
without
any reaction above I suspect that maybe the change "u-boot & syslinux
change in F21 <http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/u-boot_syslinux>" is
implemented partially only and there is no possibility to use kickstart
file.

Regards
Tomasz
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