[CentOS] setting up bare minimal CentOS VM

[R P Herrold]

On Tue, 9 Aug 2011, John R Pierce wrote:

>  how do you supply the ks.cfg file when you're PXE booting 
> and have no CD or floppy?

ummm ... with DHCP, handing out the correct boot vmlinuz image 
under PXE for the MAC address in question, and kernel command 
line arguments, one of which is the location of the ks.cfg, 
and of the initrd, usually through a 'next' server [being a 
'next' server, because it provides the next needed 
information] again through the TFTPD, DHCPD and (usually) FTPD 
or HTTPD

It has not changed for years, and in all honesty, as much of 
what is happening is burned into 'state machines, inside of 
boot roms on network interfaces, it will NEVER change 
substantially.  See, HPA's work with SYSLINUX

It is fully tested by me under CentOS 6, as part of my install 
testing -- so-called wire installs are how I always install

> is there a good how-to on setting up kickstart servers for EL6 ?

We installed perhaps ten units that way today under C6

I've pretty well covered everything that can go wrong in such 
a process, starting a decade ago

http://www.owlriver.com/tips/pxe-install/
http://www.owlriver.com/tips/hands-off/
http://www.owlriver.com/tips/tftp-xinetd/
http://www.owlriver.com/tips/centos-upgradeany/
http://www.owlriver.com/tips/tiny-centos/
http://www.owlriver.com/tips/minimal-installer/

http://www.shabazian.com/lw2007.pdf (Chip Shabazian)

and of course the LTSP (Jim McQuillan) and K12LTSP (gone dark, 
and owned by a domain squatter, now-a-days) projects' work in 
Linux space

> redhat can't be serious when they say...
>
> http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Installation_Guide/s1-netboot-pxe-config.html

> like, *WHAT* files??   does anyone PROOF READ this stuff ?!?  (yeah, I
> know, this is upstream's problem, not CentOS...)

There are no typos that I see there

All the pointers you need to get started are in that 
paragraph.  All URL's above are 'primary sources' and orininal 
content on how to do it

-- Russ herrold