RHBA-2010:0248 - Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

An updated pykickstart package that fixes two bugs and adds three
enhancements is now available.

Description

The pykickstart package is a python library used to manipulate kickstart
files.

This updated package fixes the following bugs:

• The anaconda installation system would crash when attempting to write

guest installation files to a iscsi connected host. This was because
pykickstart did not specify an iscsi port for use in the installation. This
behaviour has been corrected and pykickstart now specifies a default iscsi
port. (BZ#547678)

• The update which enabled the --hvargs boot option in pykickstart

(see BZ#547877) caused anaconda to a return the error: "KeyError: 'hvArgs'"
and exit the installation. A patch has been applied to kickstart.py to
correct this. (BZ#540473)

This update also adds the following enhancements:

• pykickstart now has an additional bootloader option (--hvargs) which

allows kernel arguments for the hypervisor to be specified in the kickstart
file. (BZ#547877)

• pykickstart now adds the kickstart line number of a script to anaconda

error logs if that script causes the installation to fail. This assists
with debugging kickstart installation problems. (BZ#547188)

• The kickstart install process is able to use package group entries to

automatically install all packages in a specified 'group'. Functionality
has now been added to both pykickstart and the anaconda install system to
also support group exclusions, such as -@conflicts. (BZ#555311).

pykickstart users should upgrade to this updated package, which fixes
these issue and adds these enhancements.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure all previously-released errata
relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via the Red Hat Network. Details on how to
use the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at
http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/docs/DOC-11259

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 5 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 5 ppc
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI 5 i386

Fixes

• BZ - 540473 - KeyError: 'hvArgs'
• BZ - 547188 - [RHEL5.5][Anaconda] kickstart installations failing tributeError: AnacondaKSScript instance has no attribute 'lineno'
• BZ - 547678 - kickstart iscsi command should have a default value for --port
• BZ - 555311 - RFE: Better groups exclusion support

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)