Hi Sara,

I ran into the same thing earlier this year. We started using Gen9's. We had issues with boot from San and switching them to legacy mode, so we went with EFI, aka UEFI. EFI or UEFI boot is a different method of managing booting the OS. It was developed by HP in the Itanium servers. But you can search for the features and differences with legacy boot.

The way I went after booting with an ISO for kickstart installs is to create a dual boot ISO, legacy and EFI boot. Anything that will boot from legacy mode will read the isolinux.cfg and EFI mode will read the Bootx64.conf.

To create a dual ISO, create directory and copy EFI/ images/ isolinux/ directories from an install DVD. Next all you legacy boot entries will go into the isolinux/isolinux.cfg. You can see the example I have above. For EFI, you will have to edit the EFI/BOOT/BOOTx64.conf. Here is an example of what I put into mine.

-----start------

debug --graphics

default=0
splashimage=/EFI/BOOT/splash.xpm.gz
timeout 900
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.6
kernel /images/pxeboot/vmlinuz
initrd /images/pxeboot/initrd.img
title rescue
kernel /images/pxeboot/vmlinuz rescue askmethod
initrd /images/pxeboot/initrd.img
title server-d
kernel /images/pxeboot/vmlinuz ks=nfs:nfsserver.example.net/kickstart/KSConfigs/server-d-ks.cfg ksdevice=eth0 ip=192.168.5.6 gateway=192.168.5.1 netmask=255.255.255.0 dns=192.168.2.2
initrd /images/pxeboot/initrd.img
title server-e
kernel /images/pxeboot/vmlinuz ks=nfs:nfsserver.example.net/kickstart/KSConfigs/server-e-ks.cfg ksdevice=eth0
initrd /images/pxeboot/initrd.img

------End------
In the example above, I put in an example of setting an IP as well as using DHCP. After you edit your legacy or EFI configs, then you have to create the ISO. Here is what I run to create a dual ISO:

1. cd into the directory that contains the 3 directories I mentioned earlier.
2. run > mkisofs -o ../my-iso-name.iso -R -J -A "MyDualISO" -hide-rr-moved -v -d -N -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/isolinux.boot -eltorito-alt-boot -no-emul-boot -eltorito-boot images/efiboot.img -x ${mountDIR}/isolinux -x ${mountDIR}/images -x ${mountDIR}/EFI .

Also, after this is done, your kickstart will need to be able to work with EFI boots. First, the partition table will need to be gpt. Next, the bootloader location needs to be partition. Last, you will need a partition /boot/efi with fstype as efi and size 200.

If you need help with that, I can send you my disk layout from my kickstart config. Just let me know.

Regards,
David

Hi Sara,

I am setting up my disk partitioning in a pre section, then writing the disk to a file that gets included. The script will check for all drives and then only select a disk that is greater than 130000MB, roughly 126GB. This is to deal with the ISO, USB, or cdrom that you are using to image the server. It will ignore that and select my disk which is 134GB.

--------start---------

Disk Configuration

%include /tmp/partitioning

End Disk Configuration

%pre --log /root/ks-rhn-pre.log

Find OS disk

tdsk=""
list-harddrives | while read DISK DSIZE
do
#Convert float into int
DSIZEI=${DSIZE%.*}
# get scsi ID for disk
scsi_id="$(/mnt/runtime/lib/udev/scsi_id -gud /dev/${DISK})"
echo "F-$DSIZE I-$DSIZEI-- ID $scsi_id"

# determine if we should partition this device
###  if disk is smaller than 130000, than change the size in mb to reflect it.
if [ ${DSIZEI} -gt 130000 ]; then
     # add device to ignoredisk --only-use list
     ##the following is for SAN disks##
     tdsk="/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-${scsi_id}"
     ##End SAN Disk###

    ##if using local disks, comment the tdsk above and use this###
    ##tdsk="/dev/$DISK"
    ###End Local disk###

    echo "DISK - $tdsk"

Create GPT partition

echo "creating gpt on ${tdsk}"
parted -s ${tdsk} mklabel gpt

cat << EOF >> /tmp/partitioning
bootloader --location=partition --driveorder=${tdsk}
ignoredisk --only-use=${tdsk}
zerombr
clearpart --linux --drives=${tdsk}

part /boot/efi --fstype=efi --size=200 --ondisk=${tdsk}
part /boot --fstype ext4 --size=512 --ondisk=${tdsk}
part pv.4 --size=100 --grow --ondisk=${tdsk}
volgroup vg00 --pesize=32768 pv.4

logvol / --fstype ext4 --name=lvroot --vgname=vg00 --size=10240
logvol /opt --fstype ext4 --name=lvopt --vgname=vg00 --size=2048
logvol /home --fstype ext4 --name=lvhome --vgname=vg00 --size=2048
logvol /tmp --fstype ext4 --name=lvtmp --vgname=vg00 --size=6144
logvol /var --fstype ext4 --name=lvvar --vgname=vg00 --size=5120
logvol /usr/local --fstype ext4 --name=lvulocal --vgname=vg00 --size=4096
logvol swap --fstype swap --name=lvswap1 --vgname=vg00 --size=16384
logvol swap --fstype swap --name=lvswap2 --vgname=vg00 --size=16384
EOF
exit
fi
done

%end

--------end---------

Also note, I am booting from SAN so this line will work for SAN disks. > tdsk="/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-${scsi_id}"

If you are using local disks or VMware, use this > tdsk="/dev/$DISK"

I added comments to the pre script so you can see where to make changes. Hope that helps.

Regards,
David

Hello,

For RHEL7 on UEFI systems, the file you want to modify on the boot media is BOOT/EFI/grub.cfg. You can append the inst.ks= parameter to the line starting with linuxefi in any of the entries. The second entry is selected by default; you can use the set_default= option at the beginning of the file to change that (entries are numbered from 0).

After you change grub.cfg to your preferences, you can follow the instructions in the Anaconda Customization Guide to create a new bootable ISO image with the modified boot menu.

Hi Systeembeheer Beeldengelui, Thanks for the information in your post. I am working on creating UEFI Kickstart .cfg and bootable iso/USB to boot UEFI workstations and laptops and install RHEL7. All of the time I was getting problems with the usb not booting, or booting and then getting dracut error messages each time. Then I read your line: "The volume name ( "RHEL-7.3 x86_64") may come back to bite you" - and then I noticed that it's mentioned in grub.cfg like "LABEL=RHEL-7.3\x20x......". Once I used the correct original name, the usb boot works for me.

So to all others - UEFI boot/install works great to boot from usb and install automatically through kickstart. However in my case, I don't want to go to all of this trouble to make an ISO and then make a bootable usb each time. So I added the kickstart info to grub as "ks=http://192.168.7.100/kickstart/workstations.cfg". And now all i need to do is push any changes to kickstart to the http server at 192.168.7.100 , and then boot any system from the usb drive.