dracut warning: could not boot

[Peter Keller]

Hello,

I just run into an odd problem on an asus laptop that I'd like to
install with FAI.

This laptop is normally a wireless laptop, but with a asix usb dongle
to a hard line network, the bios can be convinced to perform PXE booting.

The PXE boot works fine(miraculously), and the FAI installation kernel
is found and loaded over the network.

Then, after a relatively normal kernel boot, I get:

################################################
.. Relatively normal stuff.
... [snip]
... Refined TSC clocksource calibration: 1596.373 MHz.
... Switching to clocksource tsc

... dracut Warning: Could not boot.
dracut Warning: Could not boot.

Dropping to debug shell
/bin/sh: 0: can't access tty; job control turned off
dracut:/#
################################################

I currently have disabled nfs4 on the fai server by exporting an empty
nfs4 directory with fsid=0, the rest of the nfs exports should be
nfsv3.

It *seems* that after the kernel boots and discovers the usb devices, it
somehow suddenly forgets that it is using the usb device as a network
interface card.

An 'ip link' at the prompt show only the loopback address. I believe
this might be why dracut suddenlly got confused. It is as if the kernel
suddenly forgot about eth0.

Any ideas how to make FAI installation to a laptop with a USB dongle
work?

Also, Thank You for all the great help I've gotten on this list.  I
know sometimes I get answers then vanish for a week without saying
thanks. Sorry about that.

-pete