/dev/root does not exist when installing Centos 7.6.1810 on VMware with UEFI enabled

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vmwarelinux
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Joined: 2019/08/28 04:44:11

/dev/root does not exist when installing Centos 7.6.1810 on VMware with UEFI enabled

Post by vmwarelinux » 2019/08/28 05:06:31

My goal is to install Centos 7.6.1810 on a VMware Virtual Machine with UEFI enabled. I'm running vSphere 6.5 and it has support for creating virtual machines with EFI.

Initially, I created a virtual machine, chose UEFI instead of BIOS in its hardware settings, booted it with CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1810.iso (downloaded from the website) and successfully installed CentOS on it.

In order to build a customized ISO with kickstart configuration, I first built an ISO image from the released iso as:
# mount -o loop CentOS-7-x86_64-Minimal-1810.iso /mnt/iso/
# mkdir /tmp/uefi-iso
# cp -r /mnt/iso/* /tmp/uefi-iso
# mkisofs -o /tmp/centos_custom.iso -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -J -R -l -c isolinux/boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -eltorito-alt-boot -e images/efiboot.img -no-emul-boot -graft-points -V "CentOS7 Server.x86_64" /tmp/uefi-iso/
# isohybrid --uefi /tmp/centos_custom.iso
Note that I did not modify any configuration files to include a path to the kickstart file. After booting my Virtual Machine with this ISO image, it printed several messages

Code: Select all

dracut-initqueue timeout - starting timeout scripts
and eventually dropped me to the dracut emergency shell.

Links to screenshots from my VM's failed boot are below:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5a3rrgjfv2bpn ... 1.png?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5a3rrgjfv2bpn ... 1.png?dl=0

The VM I created should have 7 disks but none of them are visible:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/anrhyg48tax19 ... s.png?dl=0

After going through the troubleshooting section of the dracut wiki page, I added the following to my boot args:

Code: Select all

rd.shell rd.debug log_buf_len=1M
and booted my VM. The rdsosreport.txt from that boot is here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nb4ye4qfbja0q ... t.txt?dl=0

Does anyone know why the VM fails to boot with the modified ISO image? Is there an error in preparing the ISO? How can I get my VM to boot from this modified ISO and later include a kickstart config file to perform an automatic installation?

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TrevorH
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Location: Brighton, UK

Re: /dev/root does not exist when installing Centos 7.6.1810 on VMware with UEFI enabled

Post by TrevorH » 2019/08/28 16:56:46

Your iso image has the wrong label on it.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

vmwarelinux
Posts: 2
Joined: 2019/08/28 04:44:11

Re: /dev/root does not exist when installing Centos 7.6.1810 on VMware with UEFI enabled

Post by vmwarelinux » 2019/08/30 19:02:20

That was indeed the problem. Thanks a lot, Trevor

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