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  1. anaconda installer
  2. INSTALLER-4232

Document automatic DVD detection and usage on RHEL

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      Through a recent heads up from Matus Marhefka (thanks!) we found out that not only is the behavior of Anaconda working with the DVD source not properly documented, but it also differs in behavior between RHEL 9 and RHEL 10. To capture the current knowledge:

      For a kickstart that has no installation source specification and is otherwise complete, Anaconda will start automatic installation if:

      • the installation is started from a DVD image (from virtual CDROM or flash drive)
      • installation is started from boot.iso but a DVD image is also available (from virtual CDROM or flash drive)

      This behavior seems to be consistent across both RHEL 9 & 10, both VMs and baremetal (tested on a spare laptop).

      What differs is the behavior if the kickstart being used has the ignoredisk --only-use (e.g.: ignoredisk --only-use=sda):

      • if the DVD image is on a SATA CDROM then behavior is the same as before
      • if the DVD image is on USB CDROM or USB flash drive, Anaconda fails to automatically find & use the installation source on RHEL 9 only

      (What likely happens is that SATA CDROM end up on /dev/sr0 and that shortcuts the installation source detection. USB CDROM and USB flash drives end up as /dev/sd<letter> and get filtered out with regular storage devices.)

      In general this is likely correct behavior, should be properly documented for RHEL 9 & 10:

      • that is installing from the DVD media will start a kickstart installation, even when the kickstart has no installation source specified (eq. no cdrom/repo being used)
      • that he same will happen when installing from boot.iso but having a DVD image attached to the machine
      • note that using the ignoredisk kickstart command with the --only-use can interfere with this mechanism
      • note the differences in ignoredisk behavior between RHEL 9 & 10

              Unassigned Unassigned
              mkolman@redhat.com Martin Kolman
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