centOS7 netinstall with kickstart fails to get installation source - linux

I'm trying to install CentOS7 using a kickstart file with a VM. I am using a netinstall version of the ISO.
When I try to put the URL in the kickstart file, it will take a long time to check the installation source, and then fail.
I have checked the ISO, installing successfully without kickstart and using this address for the source:
url --url="http://sunsite.rediris.es/mirror/CentOS/7/os/x86_64/"
However, when using kickstart file, I install and then fail with below error message -
Error setting up base repository
Even if I manually type it in after it errors out.
Does anyone have any ideas? I have reduced my kickstart file to just that one line and it still shows the same behaviour. I don't have this problem with kickstart using the minimal or full install ISO's.

I'm just learning Linux so I didn't realize you could switch into another screen and monitor the install/run commands simultaneously.
After doing so I realised it wouldn't resolve names.
My DNS is dead/isn't responding. Used kickstart to manually assign another DNS server to the interface. This allowed the install to resolve the url. This would explain why the install worked with the netinstall iso on its own, as it was using default settings.
Hope this helps someone.

Related

A solution to rEFInd unable to load using shim when Secure Boot is enabled

Background
Ubuntu 21.10 can load on my computer through secure boot, and the shim version is 15.4. Then refer to the official tutorial, I installed rEFInd v0.13.2 (the latest version when I posted this blog) via PPA in Ubuntu 21.10. However, when I restart the system and load rEFInd, it always fails with the message Verification failed:(0x1A)Security Violation. I'm sure that both refind_local.cer and refind.cer under the EFI/refind/keys/ have been enrolled through MokManager (Although only refind_local.cer is needed through PPA installation).
Cause
From this post, I got that rEFInd currently (v0.13.2) lacks the .sbat section. For shim 15.3 and later versions, SBAT is mandatory, resulting in failure to start rEFInd.
The post also indicates that the author of rEFInd is currently studying how to solve the related problems. I hope the later versions can fix this issue.
Solution
To conclude, you need to use shim 15 to solve this problem. For this purpose, you can perform the following steps (applicable to amd64. Steps are also similar if you are on other architectures):
Obtain MokManager and the shim efi file signed by Microsoft from Ubuntu launchpad. To achieve this, download shim_15+1552672080.a4a1fbe-0ubuntu2_amd64.deb and shim-signed_1.45+15+1552672080-064ubuntub_bed64.deb.
Unpack the downloaded shim_15+1552672080.a4a1fbe-0ubuntu2_amd64.deb and take out the mmx64.efi file. (data.tar.xz-> . -> usr/lib/shim/mmx64.efi)
Unpack the download shim-signed_1.45+15+1552672080.a4a1fbe-0ubuntu2_amd64.deb, take out the shimx64.efi.dualsigned file. (data.tar.xz-> . -> usr/lib/shim/shimx64.efi.dualsigned) Rename it to shimx64.efi.
Go to download refind-bin-0.13.2.zip. Then create a new folder, and put the two files taken out together with the downloaded zip file into the new folder.
Open terminal in the fore-mentioned folder, then execute the following commands:
unzip refind-bin-0.13.2.zip
cd refind-bin-0.13.2
sudo ./refind-install --shim ../shimx64.efi
If you encounter any confirmation during the installation process, just enter y to confirm.
After restarting, if it prompts Verification failed, refer to step 9 of the official tutorial. Select Enroll key from disk, and then select the ESP disk where you installed rEFInd. Finally, choose the file of path EFI/refind/keys/refind.cer to import.
If you use a non-Ubuntu Linux system on your computer, you can continue to import the cer files corresponding to your distributions in EFI/refind/keys as above. Failure to do so may cause your Linux distribution to be unable to boot via rEFInd.

GitLab fails on install and/or reconfigure

For a college assignment I had to configure gitlab on my virtual machine that’s hosted on google cloud engine and is currently running Ubuntu 20.04.
I tried to install gitlab twice but the install fails (first it got stuck for at least 5 minutes on unpacking github-ce (13.10.2-ce.0) then it failed.
Reconfiguring gets me the same message but without any context, I don’t know where the error is, what is causing it and how to fix it.
I did research this error but the only thing that I found out is that it’s probably related with the config file. Only line in my config line that’s not commented out is the external url and it has a value so I have no idea what to do.
I guess something on the machine is fup. Try the same on a known-good new machine / fresh install.
Ubunut 20.04
Sounds like a fun OS.

Keep getting kernel error when trying to install VM using kickstart file on centos8

This is the first time that i ask a question in here and i am hopping someone can help me with this problem i am having installing a VM on my centos8 server using kickstart file. I have follow guides from youtube, linkedin course and other site that provide guides to install with kickstart file.
I do have some linux skills but i still see myself as a beginner.
The problem that i am having is when i try to install a VM from terminal using a kickstart file i get an error with the kernel. I tried to remove the kickstart commando to see if it would run and setup the VM without installing the OS and it did. I then tried to remove the some of the argument in the kickstart commando to see if it was one of them that was the problem but i just keep getting the same error. I commando that i use is below and i also tried it with a centos8 images but i am getting the same error with that one.
I get the kickstart file by install a VM manually and copy the file over so that i know what the setup is going to be.
virt-install --name centos7-ks --ram 2048 --os-variant=centos7.0 --cdrom=/home/install/CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-2003.iso --nographics --disk path=/var/lib/libvirt/images/centos7-ks.qcow2,size=20,bus=virtio,format=qcow2 --initrd-inject=/home/install/anaconda-Centos7-ks.cfg --extra-args="ks=anaconda-Centos7-ks.cfg ip=dhcp console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200n8"
ERROR Kernel arguments are only supported with location or kernel installs.
I tried to look up the error but i was not able to fine anything about it and i ask everyone i know that knows about linux and they don´t know what the problem is. I am really hopping that someone in here can help.
You need to replace parameter cdrom by parameter location:
virt-install --name centos7-ks --ram 2048 --os-variant=centos7.0 --location=/home/install/CentOS-7-x86_64-DVD-2003.iso --nographics --disk path=/var/lib/libvirt/images/centos7-ks.qcow2,size=20,bus=virtio,format=qcow2 --initrd-inject=/home/install/anaconda-Centos7-ks.cfg --extra-args="ks=anaconda-Centos7-ks.cfg ip=dhcp console=tty0 console=ttyS0,115200n8"
I hope this solves your problem.

No Internet on Custom Image VM for Azure

I launched an Ubuntu 18.04 VM with Azure. I installed a bunch of stuff that I need. Then, I used the dashboard to create a custom image from this machine. After that, I checked that the image was okay by launching some machines with that image. Everything seemed to be working fine.
Today, I launched a new instance with my custom image. Then I tried to install a few things with apt-get install and I get the following error (e.g. for unzip):
sudo: unable to resolve host ABCDEFG: Resource temporarily unavailable
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package unzip is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
E: Package 'unzip' has no installation candidate
This same thing happens for any package I try to install. After testing some basic things with my repositories, I checked the internet connection with ping. E.g. ping www.google.com which is also not working. I launched a vanilla Ubuntu 18.04 instance and I am not having these problems with that machine.
I have also tried sudo reboot but no luck with that. I did notice that when the system booted it shows the following error, also indicating that something is wrong with the internet:
Failed to connect to https://changelogs.ubuntu.com/meta-release-lts. Check your Internet connection or proxy settings
Any help is greatly appreciated.
So, after some digging around, I found this answer to something similar: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1045278/ubuntu-server-18-04-temporary-failure-in-name-resolution.
I used the following command and the internet started working again:
sudo ln -s ../run/systemd/resolve/stub-resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf
This is a little different than the answer on askubuntu because this is on an Azure image. First, I noticed that my image was missing resolv.conf in /etc. Using ls -la /etc/resolv.conf on a different azure image, I saw that it was a symbolic link to ../run/systemd/resolve/stub-resolve.conf, so I created a link that matched this format on my machine and that fixed things.
** EDIT **
It's worth noting that when you deprovision the VM to create the custom image, it does say:
WARNING! The waagent service will be stopped.
WARNING! Cached DHCP leases will be deleted.
WARNING! root password will be disabled. You will not be able to login as root.
WARNING! /etc/resolv.conf will be deleted.
WARNING! xxxx account and entire home directory will be deleted.

Virtualmin Installation

I had installed virtualmin on a RHEL system and a couple of very strange problems have cropped up.
Firstly, the Apache test page now says - powered by CentOS instead of RHEL. All the files and filesystems are intact therefore I am at a loss as to why it would report another version of linux altogether.
Secondly, my sudo access has been overwritten / removed after installation. It just comes up with a message that XXXX (username) does not have sudo access....etc
And lastly, trying to access the virtualmin page over the port 10000 is just returning an "unable to connect" error. [Since I am locked out of using sudo, I am at a loss of how to proceed].
Thank you in advance for your help.
The Apache package we ship is a rebuild of the SRPM from CentOS. The default page is simply an HTML file...it is not "reporting" anything, really, except that you haven't setup any websites yet. On CentOS/RHEL Apache has to be rebuilt in order to support virtual servers in /home when using suexec. So, this is expected behavior and no reason for alarm. We used to ship a custom error page instead (with Virtualmin logo instead of CentOS, but the patch broke a while back and I never got around to fixing it...might go back to that next time we roll an Apache update).
Virtualmin did not touch your sudoers file. That problem is unrelated to the Virtualmin installation. (I wrote the install.sh and the virtualmin-base package; I'm 100% certain your sudoers issue is unrelated to Virtualmin). I don't have any guesses about what went wrong there, or how to fix it if you don't have any way to access the machine as root (rebooting into single user mode would be the right thing if you have hardware access or can get access via a KVM from your hosting provider/colo).
We would need to see the last few dozen lines of the install log to know what went wrong with the Virtualmin installation, and why Webmin failed to start.

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