ESXi 5.5 Install (via iPXE using Razor) - Failed to free base memory

[onxis]

Greetings,

I'm having some challenges with Razor's default vmware_esxi task when migrating off of DAS and onto a ISC-DHCP provide iSCSI boot volume. I'd like to use Razor to facilitate bare metal provisioning and pass the final configuration over to an ESM like Chef.

The x86 compute node (supermicro X8DTT-H motherboard, Intel X540 NIC), connects to a couple of 10G .1q Trunks. The native VLAN on this trunk is 2003. A razor VM is installed on 10.136.0.10, VLAN 136. A DHCP relay between VLAN 2003 and 136 is in place. ISC-DHCP is also 10.136.0.10 to provide a scope for 10.200.3.0/24.

When the node PXE boots, it is given an IP of 10.200.3.10 via DCHP/BOOTP, the node is also given an iSCSI target, IQN, filename (bootstrap.ipxe) and a "next-server" of 10.136.0.10. Bootstrap.ipxe is loaded from 10.136.0.10. An IQN provided by DHCP is sucessfully used to register a SAN device at 0x80.

On _first boot_, Razor's pushes a Fedora19 based image to the new node. The image discovers "facts" about the new node - what's type of h/w it is; CPU, RAM, Manufactuer, UUID etc..etc and passes this back to the Razor, prior to a reboot.

Facts registered about the new node are used to create tags, environment specific meta-data can been associated with tags. Tags are used to match policies, policies are associated with installer operations (tasks). After the node has been factored, Razor applies a tag, some meta-data, a policy and a task is installed. For this node, I'm using the default vmware_esxi.task, which comes with the latest version of razor.

I'm getting the following error message near the end of the kickstart process, which registers as completing, but obviously doesn't!

"Failed to free base memory error 0015-995f0943 (570/584K)" at the top of a black screen.

The installer hangs.

Consequent boots, since the the kickstart section has been completed (from Razor's point of view), result in the node attempting to boot from the SAN volume, which fail whale.

I have screenshots and a video of the boot process if anyone is interested.

Happy to share configs...

to trying the SAN boot option, I was installing to DAS (LSI controller 2-way mirror) and all was well.

I'm sure someone has seen this error message before and hopefully has a simple fix for it.

Thanks!