Installing Image on Linux server thr...

Sep 17, 2008

- It's similar to a batch file, except it has a very specific syntax it's expecting. I've written quite a fdw for network deployment when I was a junior administrator for Cal State San Bernardino. Here's an example script here you can see. There is a tool that's distributed with RHEL3 to create a custom kickstart. Then, to use the kickstart, you need to boot the server and enter the following command:
linux ks=http://svn.ias.csusb.edu:8080/ks/cs366/ns1.cfg
Enter your url of the kickstart file of course. At install, it will ask you to assign an IP via static or dhcp, then it will use that ip to fetch the kickstart file. It will then instruct the linux install on how to install to the server.
You'll notice a section called post at the end. This is a simple shell script-style command list. It can include almost any legal shell command in the file. It's a great time to setup things like httpd, or samba. You can even fetch custom config files in the post section, so at first boot it's completely setup. For example, in the post section, include a line that looks like this:
cd /etc
wget http://svn.ias.csusb.edu:8080/ks/cs366/httpd.conf.tar.gz
tar zxvf httpd.conf.tar.gz
And it will download all the apache config files, and put them in place before the firstboot even happens.
You can also specify a remote system to pull the install files from, so at install you are pulling all the latest rpm's instead of the stale ones from the cd. However, this can go rather slow depending on the internet connection and the packages selected.
Of course, I can offer premium assistance on this. I own a small computer consulting firm which is listed here on fixya called In Home Tech Support. (909) 724-4498. We setup and maintain a number linux installs all over the country.
Steven