RHEL 6.3 kickstart ignores clearpart clause if disk does not contain a valid partition

Solution Verified - Updated -

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3
  • Kickstart install

Issue

  • After installing a new disk to a server, during the unattended setup it stopped, asking for an action:
This device may need to be reinitialized.

REINITIALIZING WILL CAUSE ALL DATA TO BE LOST!

This action may also be applied to all other disks needing reinitialization.
  • It didn't happen up to RHEL6.3.

Resolution

  • Specify in your KS (kickstart) script the clause zerombr.
  • NOTICE: the zerombr clause will initialize all unpartioned disks. It might void raw disks, such as Oracle raw device disks.
  • This clause also does not honor the clearpart clause.
  • However, you can set the disks to be probed, using the clause ignoredisk --only-use=sda, for example, for only running zerombr for sda disk.
  • For reference, visit Kickstart options.

Root Cause

  • This change was done by design in anaconda-13.21.176-1.el6_3. See errata.

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