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Kickstart
The process of performing a kickstart install involves: 1. Creating and configuring a kickstart file a. This can be done with any text editor b. Can also be done using one of the GUI system configuration tools c. Using automatically generated template files 2. Deciding on the location of the file a. The file can be stored on a floppy disk b. Can be planted directly on the install media (cdrom, hard disk etc) c. Can also be stored at a central network location 3. Deciding on a method to bootstrap the install process a. This is usually via the vendor provided install media (cdrom, floppy, USB) b. Can be done over the network provided the hardware supports it (PXE, bootp dhcp) 4. Creating a repository of the installation tree and making it accessible a. The repository can be the vendor provided media b. Can be a dedicated partition on a local drive c. Can be located on a web server (http), ftp server (ftp) or NFS server (nfs) Before proceeding with the exercise below, make sure that your staging environment meets the minimum requirements below and that you have the items required: 1. The first CD in the set of Fedora’s installation CD’s (CD #1) or the FC4 DVD-ROM 2. A blank floppy diskette 3. Access to a currently running system on which you can create a plain text file (the Kickstart file) 4. A system on which you will perform the new install and wipe out any existing operating system or partitions. 5. An accessible DHCP server available somewhere on the network (if you are going to manually configure your TCP/IP settings, you won’t need this. But if you are performing a network based install, this will be required). Exercise 1 Our objective in this exercise is to create a kickstart file. The file will conform to the specifications below: i. The Kickstart file will be stored on a floppy disk and named “ks.cfg” ii. The first in the set of Fedora’s installation CD’s (CD #1) or the FC4 DVD-ROM will be used to bootstrap the install process. iii. The file will help us perform an automated install of a thin Fedora Core system. By “thin”, we mean a minimal system with only the most necessary packages i.e. No windowing environment, no Gnome or KDE desktop environment etc. iv. The file will specify the local CDROM drive as that install media. And because this is a thin install, only the first Fedora install CD (CD #1) or DVD-ROM will be required. (Hints will also be provided as comments in the Kickstart file on how to point the file to a network based installation tree) v. The Kickstart configuration will wipe out any existing partitions on the hard drive and create 3 new partitions – A 120 MB boot partition (/boot), a 1 GB root partition (/) and a 512 MB swap partition. To create a Kickstart file If you don’t want to do too much typing, you can get a copy of the “ks.cfg” used in this exercise from this URL: http://www.labmanual.org/llm1/configs/ks-FC4.cfg  1. Open up any plain text editor and enter the text below into the file:
part pv.3 --size=0 --grow --ondisk=hda volgroup VolGroup00? --pesize=32768 pv.3 logvol swap --fstype swap --name=LogVol01 --vgname=VolGroup00 --size=512 logvol / --fstype ext3 --name=LogVol00 --vgname=VolGroup00 --size=1024
2. Save the file as “ks.cfg” and exit your text editor. 3. Copy the file to the root of a blank floppy disk. While in the directory where the “ks.cfg” file was saved type: root@localhost root# mcopy ks.cfg a: 4. Insert CD #1 of the Fedora set of install media into the CDROM drive of the system you want to perform the new installation on. 5. Insert the floppy disk containing the kickstart file you created above into the floppy disk drive of the target system 6. Power on (or reboot if it is already running) the system and boot off the CDROM drive. (The system’s BIOS has to be configured to boot off the CDROM/DVD drive) 7. At the installation screen type: “linux ks=floppy” TIP: You can also tell the installer to fetch the kickstart configuration file directly from a website. For example if you want to use the sample kickstart file at the www.labmanual.org website, you can pass this parameter to the installer:linux ks=http://www.labmanual.org/llm1/configs/ks-FC4.cfg 8. The installation should complete very quickly because it is a very thin system with very few packages and almost no user interaction is required. Wait for the installation to complete. The system will reboot itself after completion - as was specified in the kickstart file. 9. After the system has booted up, log into the system as root. 10. Run a few commands to make sure that the settings you choose in the kickstart file were used. For example, check the sizes of the partitions. Type: root@localhost root# df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/hda2 985M 532M 403M 57% / /dev/hda1 117M 5.9M 105M 6% /boot none 94M 0 94M 0% /dev/shm 11. While in root’s home directly use the “ls” command to view a listing of the files in there. Type: root@localhost root# ls anaconda-ks.cfg install.log install.log.syslog 12. Use a pager (less, more) to view the contents of the “anaconda-ks.cfg” file listed above. Type: root@localhost root# less anaconda-ks.cfg 13. Fedora’s installation program is called Anaconda. It creates a kickstart file based on the options used during the installation of the OS. The file is usually named - anaconda-ks.cfg and is by default saved in root’s home directory as a part of the installation process. The “anaconda-ks.cfg” kickstart file can be used as a template for other installations that require a similar configuration TIPS!! i. To use the template kickstart file that Anaconda generates for you, you might have to uncomment the partitioning directives in the file. That section is usually commented out in the template file. If the file is used as it is, the install program will require some user intervention during the disk partitioning portion of the installation.
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