Preupgrading headless remote systems

[Steve Berg]

Meant to send this to the list in case any one is curious about possible 
solutions.

On 11/05/2010 03:39 PM, Robert Myers wrote:
> Maybe I'm missing something:
>
> > From a computer with ssh and an X-server:
>
> $ssh -X 192.168.xxx.yyy
> $me at 192.168.xxx.yyy: su
> #root at 192.168.xxx.yyy: preupgrade
>
> Robert.
That works just fine to start preupgrade.  It doesn't work for all the 
work to be done after the next reboot.

To reboot into anaconda and the upgrade you have to either be at the 
console or you have to make changes in the grub.conf so the system won't 
boot into the old kernel.  Once you change that and it boots into 
anaconda it may ask which NIC to use if you have more than one.  That 
selection is usually made at the console.  So for a headless remote 
system you're kind of screwed.  Same thing goes for selecting language 
and keyboard layout, they need to be set from grub.conf because if not 
set anaconda wants you to specify before VNC loads up and is available.

I think I figured most of it out just a short time ago.

For the network:  adding "ksdevice=eth0" or "ksdevice=${mac address}" or 
"ksdevice=link" seems to satisfy that question in a multiple NIC 
computer.  I used "ksdevice=link" because most of the systems I'm 
working with only have one active link.  But there's some systems that 
have two or more active links but only one that can be used for the 
upgrade.  I plan to use the mac address version for those.

Keyboard and language I was able to figure it out from a couple of other 
systems that I recently upgraded at the console by reading the 
/root/anaconda-ks.cfg file for those keyword value pairs.