It seems the problem was incorrect mapping of the hard disk.
If the USB was plugged in during boot, hard disk was recognized as hd1; but if there wasn't the USB, it was recognized as hd0.
Fixed the problem by changing grub.conf to use hd0.
Finally figured it out..This is what worked for CentOS 6.4...Results might vary depending on what version you're using...
UPDATE: I decided not to modify the original post but wanted to make sure that nouveau.modeset=0 should be replaced with nomodeset. At least in my case this was a better solution than using nouveau.modeset=0 which only worked on certain hardware.
From looking at /var/log/messages, I noticed that nouveau, which is needed by plymouth was setting the resolution to 1024x768. This caused the resolution to change even though it had been set to something lower using vga=ask in grub.conf. So, the behavior symptoms look like this:
- First part of the boot uses whatever is set in grub.conf for
vga= parm.
- Shortly after the first part of the boot
nouveau kicks in and changes it to the the default (1024x768) or nouveau.modeset=3. You can see this in /var/log/messages.
Fix it by adding this to the kernel line in /etc/grub.conf:
nouveau.modeset=0
It was by default setting it to nouveau.modeset=3 causing 1024x768 even though something else was set using using the vga= setting... The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing in this case. What a pain fixing this was...Argggg!!!! I'm sure there is a reason for doing it this way but it seems like nouveau should look at the vga= before defaulting to anything....
/etc/grub.conf:
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title CentOS (2.6.32-358.el6.i686)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.32-358.el6.i686 ro root=UUID=6916dd58-165a-4026-8df2-42cd555c8c0f
rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 rd_NO_MD
SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 crashkernel=auto KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rd_NO_DM
nouveau.modeset=0
initrd /initramfs-2.6.32-358.el6.i686.img
If you are suffering from something similar, check /var/log/messages and see what nouveau is setting for modeset and adjust accordingly in /etc/grub.conf.
If you have a custom installation with a kickstart file, you can add this parm on the bootloader line of ks.cfg:
bootloader --location=mbr --driveorder=sda --append="crashkernel=auto nouveau.modeset=0"
Otherwise, I would change it in /boot/grub/grub.conf and /etc/grub.conf
If you have a custom install of CentOS and you want to control the resolution from the start of the install, try modifying your isolinux.cfg file:
default linux
prompt 1
timeout 0
display boot.msg
F1 boot.msg
F2 options.msg
F3 general.msg
F4 param.msg
F5 rescue.msg
label linux
kernel vmlinuz
append initrd=initrd.img text ks=cdrom:/ks.cfg nousbstorage resolution=800x600 nouveau.modeset=0
label text
kernel vmlinuz
append initrd=initrd.img text nousbstorage resolution=800x600 nouveau.modeset=0
label ks
kernel vmlinuz
append ks initrd=initrd.img nousbstorage resolution=800x600 nouveau.modeset=0
label local
localboot 1
label memtest86
kernel memtest
append -
Best Answer
According to the docs, it seems you can't get rid of it from Kickstart: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Kickstart#bootloader
But what you can do is get the command line and the grub config replaced in the post-install (%post) section and delete it from there.
I think this should do: