Normally a kickstart file is copied to the boot diskette, or
made available on the network. The network-based approach is most
commonly used, as most kickstart installations tend to be performed
on networked computers.
Let us take a more in-depth look at where the kickstart file may
be placed.
Diskette-based booting is no longer supported in Red Hat
Enterprise Linux. Installations must use CD-ROM or flash memory
products for booting. However, the kickstart file may still reside
on a diskette's top-level directory, and must be named ks.cfg.
To perform a CD-ROM-based kickstart installation, the kickstart
file must be named ks.cfg and must be
located in the boot CD-ROM's top-level directory. Since a CD-ROM is
read-only, the file must be added to the directory used to create
the image that is written to the CD-ROM. Refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Installation Guide for
instructions on creating boot media; however, before making the
file.iso image file, copy the ks.cfg kickstart file to the isolinux/ directory.
To perform a pen-based flash memory kickstart installation, the
kickstart file must be named ks.cfg and
must be located in the flash memory's top-level directory. Create
the boot image first, and then copy the ks.cfg file.
For example, the following transfers a boot image to the pen
drive (/dev/sda) using the dd command:
dd if=diskboot.img of=/dev/sda bs=1M
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Note |
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Creation of USB flash memory pen drives for booting is possible,
but is heavily dependent on system hardware BIOS settings. Refer to
your hardware manufacturer to see if your system supports booting
to alternate devices.
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Network installations using kickstart are quite common, because
system administrators can easily automate the installation on many
networked computers quickly and painlessly. In general, the
approach most commonly used is for the administrator to have both a
BOOTP/DHCP server and an NFS server on the local network. The
BOOTP/DHCP server is used to give the client system its networking
information, while the actual files used during the installation
are served by the NFS server. Often, these two servers run on the
same physical machine, but they are not required to.
To perform a network-based kickstart installation, you must have
a BOOTP/DHCP server on your network, and it must include
configuration information for the machine on which you are
attempting to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The BOOTP/DHCP
server provides the client with its networking information as well
as the location of the kickstart file.
If a kickstart file is specified by the BOOTP/DHCP server, the
client system attempts an NFS mount of the file's path, and copies
the specified file to the client, using it as the kickstart file.
The exact settings required vary depending on the BOOTP/DHCP server
you use.
Here is an example of a line from the dhcpd.conf file for the DHCP server:
filename "/usr/new-machine/kickstart/";
next-server blarg.redhat.com;
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Note that you should replace the value after filename with the name of the kickstart
file (or the directory in which the kickstart file resides) and the
value after next-server with
the NFS server name.
If the file name returned by the BOOTP/DHCP server ends with a
slash ("/"), then it is interpreted as a path only. In this case,
the client system mounts that path using NFS, and searches for a
particular file. The file name the client searches for is:
The <ip-addr> section of the file name
should be replaced with the client's IP address in dotted decimal
notation. For example, the file name for a computer with an IP
address of 10.10.0.1 would be 10.10.0.1-kickstart.
Note that if you do not specify a server name, then the client
system attempts to use the server that answered the BOOTP/DHCP
request as its NFS server. If you do not specify a path or file
name, the client system tries to mount /kickstart from the BOOTP/DHCP server and tries to
find the kickstart file using the same <ip-addr>-kickstart file name as
described above.
