Kickstart short cuts for noobs

Kickstart short cuts for noobs

Introduction

Purpose

Kickstart is the core of the automated installation system used by Fedora and RHEL.

This short cut describes how to set-up such a system.

References

http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Documents

KVM documentation page.

Kickstart Works

High level overview of Kickstart, and a tool for modifying the kickstart configuration.

Linux KickStart HOWTO

This HOWTO briefly describes how to use the RedHat Linux KickStart system to rapidly install large numbers of identical Linux boxes.

To Set Up A Local Yum Repository On Fedora 8

Creating a local repository.

Operating Environment

yum install yum-utils

This package will enable you to download packages, without installing them. So you can populate your kickstart server with packages that didn't come with the Install media.

Do the virsh bridge create in kickstart http://www.mail-archive.com/netcf-devel@lists.fedorahosted.org/msg00361.html

Administration

Creating the NFS export Structure

1. mkdir -p /exports/ks/configs
2. mkdir -p /exports/ks/images
3. update /etc/exports

/exports/ks/config             192.168.42.0/255.255.255.0(ro,no_root_squash)

1. service nfs restart

populate an install directory for kickstart use

1. mount -o loop /exports/isos/images/rhel6beta2.iso /mnt
2. pushd /mnt
3. cp -r * /exports/ks/images/rhel6beta2
4. update /etc/exports

/exports/ks/images/rhel6beta2  192.168.42.0/255.255.255.0(ro,no_root_squash)

Adding a package to the repository

• yumdownloader sysstat: Downloads the 'sysstat' packages, to the current directory, and with the same architecture as the current system architechture.
  • 'uname -m' will print the system architecture.

Local repository

See the reference in the reference list.

1. yum install lighttpd
2. vi /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf
   • enable mod_aliases
   • add 'alias.url = ( "/yum" => "/exports/isos/repos" )'
3. chkconfig lighttpd on
4. /etc/init.d/lighttpd start