On Wed, 2009-10-14 at 22:17 -0400, David Mehler wrote:

Hello, I'm trying to do an unattended CentOS 5.3 install. For the most part it's working. As of right now i'm statically assigning the machine an IP which i believe will allow %post to resolve names? I also like knowing where the box will show up. I am however having a few issues and I'm probably thinking to complicated on them. My first one is the fact that updates aren't working from %post. Under the assumption name resolution is working, see above with the static configuration, the issue is then most likely importing of gpg keys. I've got these lines in %post:

# GPG keys echo "Importing GPG keys ..." rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY* /usr/bin/yum -y update

When they're uncommented the box hangs, i'd love to see output.

---- I would expect to see that in the error out console <Control><Alt><F4> (I think...maybe F3, or F5, I always forget). Generally, I will log everything that happens anyway so I would add to each of the 'custom lines something like '>> post-install.log 2&>1' instead ----

My second issue is a cosmetic one. I want to set a standard prompt in /etc/bashrc. Out of the box the bashrc PS1 lines:

if [ "$PS1" ]; then [ "$PS1" = "\s-\v\$ " ] && PS1="[\u@\h \W]\$ "

I have to make changes to that second line so a sed substitution would probably be my best bet. I'm not sure how to grab the part i need and change it. Manually i change that line to:

PS1='\u@\h:\w$'

---- I find it's easier to just replace the whole file for this though you couuld use sed, I would probably just grab a copy of bashrc from an available web server and wget it it into place. ----

I'd like to get %post to do that for me. Next, i'd like to alter /boot/grub/grub.conf. I want to set it up for serial terminal support, so i have to add a serial and terminal lines at the top of the file say after any comment blocks that might or might not be there plus add console=tty0 and/or console=ttyS0,9600n8 to the append lines to however many kernels are there. Again, i'm assuming sed but i'm not sure how to get the parts i need and edit. I want to do other things, mostly with security, increasing password complexity requirements and pam, but that should be easy once i figure out how to alter the right sections in files. Any help appreciated.

---- sounds like you're too lazy to try sed to actually give us anything useful in terms of why it's not working. Google has millions of sed examples.

Craig

On 10/15/2009 04:17 AM, David Mehler wrote:

Hello, I'm trying to do an unattended CentOS 5.3 install. For the most part it's working. As of right now i'm statically assigning the machine an IP which i believe will allow %post to resolve names? I also like knowing where the box will show up.

Start by enable logging of your %post section:

%post --log /mnt/sysimage/root/post-install.log

You can test if network is working by removing the yum update and add a:

/usr/bin/nslookup www.someaddressthatshouldwork.com

to your %post section and check the /root/post-install.log after installation.

I use network commands during my %post section (NFS mounts to a named server) and it works.

However, as others have pointed out, don't do "yum update", it is much faster to add the updates repo at the beginning, then you don't have to install the packages that have updates twice.

I use:

url --url http://ftp.crc.dk/centos/5/os/i386 repo --name=base --baseurl=http://ftp.crc.dk/centos/5/os/i386 repo --name=updates --baseurl=http://ftp.crc.dk/centos/5/updates/i386

Replace ftp.crc.dk with your favourite mirror.

Mogens