Note to Future Self: Random problems with anaconda installs after a new release

So  I have run into the following problem several times in the past, and never documented it to remember the next time it happens (I seem to do this about once every 3 years..)

Story behind the problem:

Tonight I was starting to reinstall our test cloud system so that msuchy could run his playbooks against the top node and other systems. I have been doing this very regularly, and it is pretty much a

1. Log into Dell iDrac on the cloud systems
2. Fire up the remote console.
3. Click on 'Next Boot' -> 'PXE'
4. Click on 'Warm Reboot'
5. Let the PXE menu come up and pick the mode for the particular type of hardware I am rebuilding.
6. Let it run for 10 minutes. Move to the next system
7. .... ansible stuff goes here ....

Tonight as I was doing it, it died at 

ValueError: new value non-existant xfs filesystem is not valid as a default fs type

I then used the tmux Control-B 2 to get to the shell and started looking at the log files in /tmp

01:04:30,510 INFO program: Running... modprobe xfs

storage.log has [typed from remote console]

01:04:30,509 DEBUG blivet: trying to set new default fstype to 'xfs'
01:03:30,510 DEBUG blivet:         XFS.supported: supported: True;
01:04:30,521 ERR blivet: Could not load kernel module xfs
01:04:30,521 DEBUG blivet: getFormat('xfs') returning XFS instance with object id 1
01:04:30,523 DEBUG blivet:                    XFS.supported: supported: False ;
01:04:30,521 DEBUG blivet: invalid default fstype: XFS instance (0x7fe6987362d0) objet id 1--
  type = xfs name = xfs status = False
  device = None uuid = None exists = None
  options = defaults supported = False formattable = True resizable = False
  mountpoint = None mountopts = None
  label = None size = 0 B targetSize = 0 B

01:04:30,525 DEBUG blivet:                    XFS.supported: supported: False ;
01:04:30,527 DEBUG blivet:                    XFS.supported: supported: False ;

I then tried a manual insmod of the xfs module and looked in dmesg

[  760.625372] xfs: module verification failed: signature and/or required key missing - tainting kernel
[  760.625484] xfs: disagrees about version of symbol ftrace_raw_output_prep

Aha! That tells me that my kernels don't match. Now since no one else is complaining about not being able to install xfs on EL-7.1 that tells me I have a mismatched kernel somewhere.

Now for a lot of our systems we use https://infrastructure.fedoraproject.org/infra/docs/kickstarts.txt and the grub-boot method to rebuild systems. But as mentioned above, we use PXE for the cloud systems and when we updated to the new RHEL-7.1 images we forgot to update the PXE kernel items. Update the vmlinuz and initrd.img on the PXE server and tada! it all works.

FLOCK Rochester NY 2015: 3 things you should do...

This is cribbed from Ruth Suehle's email to announce and other lists:

1. Register! Only 70 people have registered so far. What are you waiting for? https://register.flocktofedora.org/
2. Submit a talk!  We've extended the deadline to May 2. Get those talk proposals in! https://register.flocktofedora.org/ 
3. Reserve your hotel room! The deadline is July 16, but that doesn't mean you should wait until the last minute. It doesn't cost anything to reserve. https://resweb.passkey.com/go/FLOCK2015 

The FLOCK committee is exploring some really fun options for evening events right now, so Ruth hopes to be able to tell you about those soon. Keep an eye on the website, which in the next few days Ruth and others will be updating with information about Rochester.

FLOCK 2015 is in Rochester NY

This is a short blog post to get over my writer's block. For the last 2 years, Fedora has had a computer festival called FLOCK in either Europe or North America. The first FLOCK happened in beautiful Charleston SC in 2013. The second FLOCK was in the wonderful capital of the Czech Republic, Prague. This years FLOCK is to be held from August 12-15 in Rochester New York. The main website is having some issues (various links aren't pointing to the correct places because Wordpress is being obstinate) but these are being worked on as I write and hopefully will be fixed soon.

To register for the Rochester FLOCK, please go to https://register.flocktofedora.org/ and add your name and data to the list.

[Edited to fix a STUPID mistake on my part of somehow confusing Prague with Austria. Once again, mea culpa. I know better.. and I should have edited before I hit send. I was reading a history of Prague and there was a section on when it has been used in the past to stand in for ancient Vienna or other cities. PIBKAC error.]