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RackNerd custom ISO mounting issues?
FrankCastle
Member
First and foremost I would like to state that I have primarily had a great experience with RackNerd. They have always responded to my tickets in a timely manner and until recently have always been able to resolve the problem. I don't want this to be a negative thread but I'm hoping to find out if there are others out there that have had similiar issues or maybe know of a way to resolve them.
Over the last 18 months or so I've owned three different RackNerd VPS instances that I submitted a ticket to mount a custom ISO. All three of those times I was able to install my custom OS (in my case OpenBSD) without a single hitch. Recently with the Black Friday promotions I decided to get one more VPS (because I only had a single instance remaining). The order went smoothly as usual and I submitted my ticket to mount the custom ISO as I always did. They processed it quickly but this time while the mounted ISO did come up I kept getting errors on install. I asked them to maybe switch machines (thinking it was an isolated problem) which to their credit they did do for me. Same problem. Again, I've never had any issues so I assumed it was something on their end (KVM settings that they changed or something like that). They assured me everything was the same as it always was so I asked them to put my new instance on the exact same host that I still have running this custom ISO. Again, to their credit they did this for me but it still didn't fix the problem.
So I have an existing host running this custom ISO working perfectly fine but no new instances they spin up for me work at all. I always spoke to a friend that has had multiple instances on RackNerd and OpenBSD always worked for them too (sanity check). In fact, any service provider that allows custom mounting for their VPS instances I've never had a problem installing OpenBSD, it always just works. Because they couldn't get it working they provided me a full refund for my latest order (again to their credit). From searching around and having run Proxmox, KVM, VirtualBox, etc it sure seems like a IDE/SATA controller setting to me but not having access to their procedures I can only guess.
Has anyone else had problems getting certain ISO images mounted or having them not work as you expected them to after they were mounted? Any stories, recommendations or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Comments
Sorry this is almost a year later but it seems that something may have changed in Racknerd's hosting. There's alot of QEMU being mentioned but I didn't investigate too hard on Racknerd's setup.
TL;DR Solution:
If the kernel is crashing when you try to unpack the file sets on the CD image then choose to download the file sets instead, with HTTP.
Long story:
I had a problem when I tried upgrading an old half-forgotten OpenBSD 6.8 to OpenBSD 7.5.
The errors seems to center around the OpenBSD CD IDE/ATAPI driver and/or the virtual drive. The kernel crashes when it tries to extract the file sets from the CD drive to the hard drive.
Search for "openbsd wdc_atapi_start" picked up this blog post. This repeats the solution from a Reddit thread.
The recommended fix is to
This makes sense as it would avoid the atapi driver, I think. ATAPI is a limited SCSI command set embedded inside of IDE. The driver seems to have a serious kernel panic when it tries to read from the virtual CD image heavily.
Instead of making a ticket to ask Racknerd to change KVM (QEMU?) settings, I chose to download the same file sets that are on the CD image over HTTP. This worked fine even if it felt silly.
Downloading with HTTP is the default for the upgrade script (i.e. it prints
[http]) so you can press ENTER instead of typing incd0as the file set source. You can see in the screenshot that I typed incd0manually. Don't do that.I had a feeling their system didnt like custom isos I gave up after 3 tries, just thought definitely not my problem, just not buying off them again in future. Also they have a crap refund policy. I said it.
Has anyone reported this as a bug to the OpenBSD project?
Oh wow, I forgot I had even posted this it was so long ago.
Your research and solution are exactly what I found myself after posting my original message. So I was able to get it resolved and running without any additional problems. That said, RackNerd was the only provider I had to take these steps with. Everywhere else it just worked normal but it was an easy fix so not really a big deal. Even a year later and me having already solved it I do greatly appreciate your post and detailed suggestions on how to make it work. Maybe it helped someone else that had run into the same issues but had not figured out a solution yet.
@dustinc "That said, RackNerd was the only provider I had to take these steps with." see, you guys are the only ones, if you can fix this then RackNerd would be perfect!