On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 7:25 PM, Yasha Karant <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> There were two more postings by me with suffix [2] and then [3] pursuant to
> the situation with SL7.2 Live on this particular platform, including the
> Ubuntu description of the hardware.
>
> As far as I can tell, all of the important hardware (harddrive and
> controller, DVD reader/burner, WNIC, NIC, pointing device, video//graphics
> card, sound card, CPU including FPU and MMU, and USB devices) are linux
> supported, including in SL 7. Have I missed something? The BIOS are
> "secure boot", but that is a standard issue on current X86-64 hardware and
> "secure boot" (read, proprietary closed source vendor controlling) can be
> disabled for "legacy boot". The issue that causes the dracut complaint is a
> missing file image on the RAMFS that a non-installed (e.g., live) system
> uses. The Ubuntu test was with a USB flash drive -- would that make a
> difference?

You don't have to use "legacy boot." You can disable secure boot and
still boot in efi mode.

Like Anaconda, Ubiquity (the Ubuntu installer) will boot using bios or
efi hardware.


> As far as the older text-based installer, I fully concur with the respondent
> below. A text based installer should at least be an option -- it worked
> much better. However, the live non-installed system supposedly will not use
> the installer. (I point out that the only enterprise competitor to EL is
> SLES, and SLES is much more GUI and automated than previous EL versions and
> also -- from direct experience -- is neither easy to configure nor properly
> supported except for large commercial-style configurations. There also is
> no equivalent to this professional email list serve for any SuSE product to
> which I had even licensed access.)

I've given up on installer installs (except for kickstart) but, in
RHEL so I assume in SL, you can switch to the text installer by adding
"inst.text" to the Anaconda kernel cmdline. AFAIR, you won't have any
disk formatting options but you can pre-format a disk.


> I understand that Ubuntu is not as stable as EL (although Ubuntu advertises
> support and at least at one point claimed that it could be used for
> production deployments -- something one dare not do with unstable
> non-hardened systems) -- but is the issue here simply one of the kernel and
> drivers? Red Hat does certify EL 7 for laptops

Your understanding of Ubuntu's incorrect. The non-LTS versions might
not be as stable as EL but the LTS versions most certainly are.

AFAIUI, your problem's that the installer's failing to boot not that
EL 7 doesn't support your hardware.


> Other than stating that EL 7 will not work, are there any other suggestions?

Nico suggested that you try a 7.0 installer rather than a 7.1 or 7.2 one.

You could also boot from the Ubuntu live installer that you've already
used, install yum, and install EL 7 with "yum
--installroot=mount_of_el_7_root_partition ..." (preferably from a
local mirror).