[CentOS-virt] Suggestions to improve this minimal kickstart config for CentOS 6?

Fri Jul 22 18:11:37 UTC 2011
Manuel Wolfshant <wolfy at nobugconsulting.ro>

On 07/22/2011 07:01 PM, Kartik Subbarao wrote:
> On 07/21/2011 09:51 AM, Manuel Wolfshant wrote:
>   >>  http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/KickStart
>   >>
>   >>  Does anyone on this list have write access to that Wiki page? Since it's
>   >>  the #1 google search result for "centos kickstart", it'd be ideal to
>   >>  have it linked from there.
>   >  Enjoy.
>
> Thanks Manuel, I'm sure this will be of help to many folks!!
>
> One suggestion -- when I deployed the ks-minimalC6.cfg, there were still
> some -firmware packages that got installed and were not removed by the
> kickstart process. I noticed that you explicitly remove various firmware
> packages by name with the '-' notation. Another approach would be to
> remove them all programmatically in a %post section, like this:
>
> %post
> rpm -e $(rpm -qa | grep -i \\-firmware | grep -v kernel-firmware)
>
> That way, you don't have to specify each one by hand, and have to keep
> track of them if a new one shows up in a future release. It also makes
> the kickstart file smaller. It's unlikely that an RPM that matches
> "-firmware" is going to be relevant to a VM, so it seems like a fairly
> safe approach. Just a suggestion.
     The kickstart is intended to create images which can also run on 
real iron, including those with "real" storage ( brocade, qlogic etc ). 
Therefore the firmware is left there on purpose.
     As of removing the firmware in %post: yes, it is one way to do it. 
But I find it awkward to install something just to remove it seconds later.
     As of ks file size: who cares ? You create it once and use it as 
many times as needed. An extra dozen or hundreds of bytes / couple of 
lines are not significant in this context

     And last but not least: You can always tweak the ks to fit your 
specific needs. This one is meant for an _almost_ minimal but yet 
general context. If you really want to go "minimal" there are at least 
other 5 packages that can be removed ( but this will, of course, remove 
some of the functionality , such as processing delta updates or selinux 
). If you want to go this road, even yum itself can be removed.