[Bug 2084639] Re: Dracut PXE/NFS boot hangs on starting network on Ubuntu 22.04

[Walid Omari]

Dear Benjamin,

I have debootstrapped and setup an ubuntu 24.04 (noble) with dracut
version 060 (available in the repo) in a directory and exported it. Here
are the results:

- If systemd and systemd-networkd modules are present: dracut hangs at initiating the network the drops to emergency shell.
- Omitting systemd and systemd-networkd dracut modules allows the system to boot properly, the network interface is renamed from eth0 to enp0s3 during boot and is not reverted back and networkctl command shows it as "configured" so it is managed by systemd-networkd which is enabled (both services systemd-network-generator.service and systemd-networkd-wait-online.service are enabled and not hanging)

I believe this means the issue is only related to ubuntu 22(.04).

If you have any input or any further tests you can suggest I'll be happy
to cooperate.

Regards,
Walid

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2084639

Title:
  Dracut PXE/NFS boot hangs on starting network on Ubuntu 22.04

Status in dracut package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Describe the bug
  When trying to setup NFS boot for an Ubuntu 22.04 image that is created with debootstrap, generating an initrd with dracut makes the boot hang after root pivot and init phase at "Starting wait for network to be configured...".
  Disabling/masking systemd-network-generator.service and systemd-networkd-wait-online.service as well as omitting systemd module when building the initrd image allows the system to boot but then the network is left unmanaged and the interfaces that were renamed before init from eth0 to enp0s3 (for example) is then reverted to eth0 when the system is booted and running networkctl command shows all interfaces as unmanaged
  With initramfs-tools generate initrd image, the system boots normally and the interfaces are renamed properly from "eth0" to "enp0s3" and are managed by systemd as expected.

  Distribution used
  ubuntu 22.04 LTS

  Dracut version
  tested both version 051 (available in apt repos) and 058 (built from source)

  Init system
  systemd

  To Reproduce

  Setup PXE server (dnsmasq), grub...
  Create an ubuntu 22.04 image with debootstrap, chroot into the created image, install kernel (currently using 5.15.0-25-generic) and other packages you may need.
  install dracut and dracut-network packages and build an initrd image.
  export the image with nfs-kernel-server and boot a VM/machine with it.
  Expected behavior
  I expect the system to boot properly like when using an initramfs-tools generated image.

  Additional context
  I understand dracut is not usually used on Debian/ubuntu, but the reason I want to use dracut is its modularity and I find it to be less complicated than initramfs tools and specifically I want to do an overlay with the NFS exported image which is just a rootovl kernel parameter in dracut rather than a whole custom script with initramfs-tools that I was not able to make it work.

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