topic Re: Error during touchless installation of CUCM 15 in Unified Communications Infrastructure

Error during touchless installation of CUCM 15

jsprengard — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 09:17:52 GMT

Hi All,

currently i am failing to install the Cisco Unified Communications Manager 15 touchless.
I follow the instructions provided in this documentation:
Touchless Installation Task Flow

Allthough it is a bit confusing (At least for me), since the section "Generate ISO Images" only describes to inject the platformConfig.xml. I myself include the clusterConfig.xml so that my ISO-file would look like this:

From the vSphere point of view i mount the bootable install image to "CD/DVD drive 1" and the answer-file to "CD/DVD drive 2".

When i boot - BIOS is set to the required boot order - everything seems to work. It logs that the automatic installation has been started. Until it stops. It always ends up in the following interactive dialogue.

Checking the logs i assume to know the problem but i don't know how to fix it.
It finds the platformConfig.xml and copies it to the /tmp/ but it fails to find the clusterConfig.xml which is, like i have shown, in the same iso-image.

Do you have an idea what might be the problem and how to resolve it?

Thank you for your time!

Re: Error during touchless installation of CUCM 15

Nithin Eluvathingal — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 12:07:36 GMT

Edited: The ASG files should be placed on the second drive.

The second image you provided shows an error: "No valid clusterconfig.xml file found. Verify your cluster configuration file, as there appears to be an issue with clusterconfig.xml."

Re: Error during touchless installation of CUCM 15

jsprengard — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 11:04:14 GMT

Unfortunately this prevents the installation from taking place at all.

Re: Error during touchless installation of CUCM 15

jsprengard — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 11:21:32 GMT

Quick note:
I just checked if the drive is mounted correctly, and it seems to be. I can even see the clusterConfig.xml in the file system.

Re: Error during touchless installation of CUCM 15

Maren Mahoney — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 12:15:59 GMT

What @Nithin Eluvathingal is saying is that there seems to be an error in the clusterConfig.xml file itself, probably a syntax error. Would you be able to post a sanitized copy of it so we can look for the error?

Maren

Re: Error during touchless installation of CUCM 15

jsprengard — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 12:36:41 GMT

Of course!

<?xml version="1.0"?> <ClusterData> <Version>15</Version> <Publisher> <Hostname> <ParamNameText>Host Name for this machine</ParamNameText> <ParamDefaultValue>none</ParamDefaultValue> <ParamValue>ref-cucm1</ParamValue> </Hostname> <IpAddress> <ParamNameText>Node Ip Address</ParamNameText> <ParamDefaultValue>none</ParamDefaultValue> <ParamValue>10.10.10.11</ParamValue> </IpAddress> <Role> <ParamNameText>Node role</ParamNameText> <ParamDefaultValue>none</ParamDefaultValue> <ParamValue>1</ParamValue> </Role> <Usage> <ParamNameText>Node usage</ParamNameText> <ParamDefaultValue>none</ParamDefaultValue> <ParamValue>0</ParamValue> </Usage> </Publisher> </ClusterData>

Joshua

Re: Error during touchless installation of CUCM 15

Maren Mahoney — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 14:26:43 GMT

That looks just fine. Hmmmm.... Did you generate it by hand or using the Answer File Generator? If you did it by hand, the issue might be something niche like UTF-8 or something. In which case I'd say try generating the file using the Answer File Generator.

Cisco Unified Communications Answer File Generator

I used to build the labs for a Cisco learning partner and have generated (very literally) many hundreds of these things. On the rare occasions when they simply would not work, going back tot he AFG and generating files anew always solved the issue.

Give it a try and let us know. If that doesn't do the trick we can dig further.

Maren

Re: Error during touchless installation of CUCM 15

jsprengard — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 08:25:34 GMT

Hi Maren, I've just tried your approach. But the problem remains the same.
The program somehow does not find a valid platformConfig.xml.
Is it perhaps related to the mounting-problem?

Re: Error during touchless installation of CUCM 15

Maren Mahoney — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 13:03:29 GMT

It's almost as if it is mounting the 'floppy' for the platformConfig.xml correctly, but when it comes to the clusterConfig.xml it is trying to mount the image again rather than accessing the already-mounted one. Which might be related to the instructions only including the platformConfig.xml (which is sufficient for a Subscriber but not the Publisher).

It might be time for TAC....

Maren

Re: Error during touchless installation of CUCM 15

Nithin Eluvathingal — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 13:25:34 GMT

I performed a test in my lab, and the installation was successful. However, I’m not seeing the same results(shared below) in your case and noticed some errors.
Could you provide more details about the process you followed?
For creating the ISO, I used WinImage.

Re: Error during touchless installation of CUCM 15

jsprengard — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 10:57:45 GMT

Hi all, it seems that i may have found the problem. It had nothing to do with the answer-files. So sorry for wasting your time.
I spoke to a colleague and explained my problem. Amusingly, he encountered the same issue, only without an answer file.
He managed to resolve the problem by mounting the bootable CUCM-image to CD/DVD-drive1 and the non bootable CUCM-image to CD/DVD-drive2. After this workaround the installation - even with the answer-file (CD/DVD-drive3) - runs through.

Thank you all for your help!

Re: Error during touchless installation of CUCM 15

Roger Kallberg — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 11:41:52 GMT

That is quite odd as the OVA for CM 15 contains 2 CD/DVD drives, not 3.

<Item ovf:required="false"> <rasd:AddressOnParent>0</rasd:AddressOnParent> <rasd:AutomaticAllocation>false</rasd:AutomaticAllocation> <rasd:ElementName>CD/DVD Drive 1</rasd:ElementName> <rasd:InstanceID>8</rasd:InstanceID> <rasd:Parent>4</rasd:Parent> <rasd:ResourceType>15</rasd:ResourceType> </Item> <Item ovf:required="false"> <rasd:AddressOnParent>0</rasd:AddressOnParent> <rasd:AutomaticAllocation>false</rasd:AutomaticAllocation> <rasd:ElementName>CD/DVD Drive 2</rasd:ElementName> <rasd:InstanceID>10</rasd:InstanceID> <rasd:Parent>5</rasd:Parent> <rasd:ResourceType>15</rasd:ResourceType> </Item>

How did you create the VM, did you use the OVA from Cisco and if so have you afterwards modified it to have 3 CD/DVD drives on the VM?

Re: Error during touchless installation of CUCM 15

Nithin Eluvathingal — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 12:21:18 GMT

I’m confused. Why do you need to upload the bootable image to CD 1 and the non-bootable image to CD 2? What’s the purpose of the non-bootable image? Also, why do we need three CD drives why add a third one?

You should mount the bootable image on CD 1 and the AFG ISO on CD 2.