NIC for Installation and their order

[Andreas Zuber]

Hi

Like many others, we had some problems with the order of the network cards 
during and after the installation. We found a way to workaround that problem, 
i'll try to explain how we did that:

- Device for Installation:

There are several points during installation where the network card is 
configured. There is a way to ensure that always the same card is used.

First, enable pxe only on the device you want to use for the installation.

After that, we tell the install kernel that we want to use the same device to 
fetch the kickstart.

/etc/cobbler/setting:
---------8<------------
kernel_options:
    ksdevice: bootif
---------8<------------

We change the value of ksdevice to bootif. bootif is a variable.

/etc/cobbler/pxesystem.template:
---------8<------------
default linux
prompt 0
timeout 1
label linux
        kernel $kernel_path
        $append_line
    IPAPPEND 2
---------8<------------

We add IPAPPEND 2 to the template file. This adds the bootif variable which 
contains the network device information to the append line.

Finally we need to ensure that anaconda uses the same device. Simply remove 
all network commands from your kickstart template/snippets and replace it 
with:

network --bootproto=dhcp

- Configure the network cards with the information from cobbler

We found that anaconda is not able to create the configuration of the network 
devices related to their MAC/hardware address. We decided to write a cheetah 
template, that uses the information form cobbler to write the network 
configuration directly to /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/

/var/lib/cobbler/snippets/post_baremetal
---------8<------------
# Network information

#set $network_baremetal_file  = '/etc/sysconfig/network'
echo "NETWORKING=yes" > $network_baremetal_file
echo "NETWORKING_IPV6=no" >> $network_baremetal_file

#for $n in $range(8, -1, -1)
  #set $ns = str($n)
  #if $getVar('mac_address_intf' + $ns, '')
    #set $network_baremetal_device = 'eth' + $ns
    #set $network_baremetal_mac = $getVar('mac_address_intf' + $ns, '')
    #set $network_baremetal_devfile  = '/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-' 
+ $network_baremetal_device
    echo "DEVICE=$network_baremetal_device" > $network_baremetal_devfile
    echo "HWADDR=$network_baremetal_mac" >> $network_baremetal_devfile
    echo "ONBOOT=yes" >> $network_baremetal_devfile
    #if $getVar('ip_address_intf' + $ns, '')
      #if $getVar('ip_address_intf' + $ns, '')
        #set $network_baremetal_ip = $getVar('ip_address_intf' + $ns, '')
        echo "BOOTPROTO=static" >> $network_baremetal_devfile
        echo "IPADDR=$network_baremetal_ip" >> $network_baremetal_devfile
        #if $getVar('subnet_intf' + $ns, '')
          #set $network_baremetal_netmask = $getVar('subnet_intf' + $ns,
'')
          echo "NETMASK=$network_baremetal_netmask" >> 
$network_baremetal_devfile
        #else
          echo "NETMASK=255.255.255.0" >> $network_baremetal_devfile
        #end if
        #if $getVar('gateway_intf' + $ns, '')
          #set $network_baremetal_gateway =  $getVar('gateway_intf' + $ns,
'')
          #set $network_baremetal_hostname = $getVar('hostname_intf' + 
$ns, 'not-found.example.com')
          echo "HOSTNAME=$network_baremetal_hostname" >> 
$network_baremetal_file
          echo "GATEWAY=$network_baremetal_gateway" >>
$network_baremetal_file
        #end if
      #end if
    #else
      echo "BOOTPROTO=dhcp" >> $network_baremetal_devfile
    #end if
  #end if
#end for
---------8<------------


We hope this helps someone else too.

Greetings
Puzzle Operations Team