Re: [atomic-devel] Bare metal installation without video display??

[Bob Gustafson <bobgus rcn com>]

See below - good progress, but no cigar yet.

On 08/21/2018 10:49 AM, Dusty Mabe wrote:

On 08/20/2018 07:48 PM, Bob Gustafson wrote:

See my reply interspersed.

On 08/20/2018 10:26 AM, Dusty Mabe wrote:

On 08/19/2018 10:50 AM, Bob Gustafson wrote:

My particular piece of bare metal seems to have enough memory, disk 
space, Intel x86_64 architecture w/4 cores, ethernet nics, but it does 
not have any video support.

I can move data using ethernet, but user interaction during install must 
go through a 115200n8 serial port.

Do you see the isolinux boot menu on the serial console? If so you just need
to edit the first entry and add console=ttyS0 to the kernel command line. 

Thanks very much for your reply.

I don't get that far on the serial console. I think that dialog is being painted to a video frame buffer..

This is what I see on an attempt using a USB stick:

could you try to add a "SERIAL" line to the isolinux/isolinux.cfg on your USB stick?
and see if that helps? I can try to do this at some point but I'm not at home right now.

Dusty

Clicking around to find out how to modify the isolinux/isolinux.cfg (which is pxelinux/pxelinux.cfg on my USB stick), it seemed too difficult with the RO nature of the iso disk.

So, I continued on my pxelinux->tftpboot path

I added the serial and console phrases to the vmlinuz and initrd.img lines - and I am seeing:

PXELINUX 6.04 PXE  Copyright (C) 1994-2015 H. Peter Anvin et al                
Hello RDG Boot.msg                                                             
Loading vmlinuz... ok                                                          
Loading initrd.img...ok                                                        
[    0.000000] Linux version 4.16.3-301.fc28.x86_64 (mockbuild bkernel02 phx2 f8
[    0.000000] Command line: BOOT_IMAGE=vmlinuz vga=off console=ttyS0,115200n8 8
...
...
[  OK  ] Reached target System Initialization.                                 
[  OK  ] Reached target Basic System.                                          
[  337.055250] random: crng init done                                          
[  367.193105] dracut-initqueue[821]: Warning: dracut-initqueue timeout - starts
...
...
         Starting Setup Virtual Console...                                     
[  OK    528.950722] audit: type=1130 audit(1520288699.910:16): pid=1 uid=0 aui'
0m] Started Setu[  528.972876] audit: type=1131 audit(1520288699.910:17): pid=1'
p Virtual Console.                                                             
         Starting Dracut Emergency Shell...                                    
[  529.069816] audit: type=1130 audit(1520288700.029:18): pid=1 uid=0 auid=4294'
[  529.090595] audit: type=1131 audit(1520288700.029:19): pid=1 uid=0 auid=4294'
Warning: /dev/root does not exist                                              
                                                                               
Generating "/run/initramfs/rdsosreport.txt"                                    
                                                                               
                                                                               
Entering emergency mode. Exit the shell to continue.                           
Type "journalctl" to view system logs.                                         
You might want to save "/run/initramfs/rdsosreport.txt" to a USB stick or /boot
after mounting them and attach it to a bug report.                             
                                                                               
                                                                               
dracut:/#

The console is live (I can type characters and they are echoed..).

11 lines up says Warning: /dev/root does not exist.

Is this a problem I can fix at this stage?