iSCSI installation with static IP address doesn't boot

[Brent Baccala]

I installed Ubuntu 17.04 server on a Cisco UCS configured to boot from iSCSI with a static IP addresses. I ran through the standard installation, configured the network interface with a manually assigned IP address, logged in to the iSCSI target and configured the disk partitioning from there. Everything went fine, then I rebooted, the boot reached the point where it said "Begin: Mounting root file system", then it began looping with messages "IP-Config: no response after x seconds - giving up".

I fixed the problem by editing first the grub commands, then /etc/default/grub (after I got the system to boot), adding a kernel option to set the IP address manually:

   ip=10.250.1.108::10.250.1.254:255.255.255.0:blade8:enp10s0:off

The installation script probably needs to add something like this, since the network has to be configured in order to load the root filesystem.