[CentOS] Attempting custom CentOS4 network install

Wed Jun 1 16:26:05 UTC 2005
Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith@ieee.org> <thebs413 at earthlink.net>

From: Ajay <ajay at unisoftindia.net>
> A new hdlist and hdlist2 is sucessfully regenerated in CentOS/base dir
> with a small reduction in file size of hdlist, but the network install fails
> at the end of "Preparing RPM transaction" screen with the message
> "install exited abnormally" and shuts down.
> Am I missing something?

I've had this happen when there is a conflict between some core packages.
It's a PITA to resolve because, as you found out first-hand, you don't know
it until you're half-way through an install.

My approach has been to only add packages I know are safe and won't
conflict with core FC/RHEL packages, and then install any additional from
either an internal APT-RPM or YUM-RPM repository.

I typically do the latter to fetch system updates anyway, including
creation of RPMs for key configuration files (and updates).  E.g.,
"CONFIG_BS-2.1.noarch.rpm" (the package name conviniently matching
my initials if anyone hasn't noticed that yet ;-).

From: Sean O'Connell <oconnell at soe.ucsd.edu>
> Ajay-
> It would be far simpler to setup a yum repository for the additional
> packages, create a custom yum.conf (or repo file for the repo), and then
> install that yum.conf or repo file in %post and then follow that up with
> a 
> yum -t -y install foo bar baz

I remember Seth talking awhile back on a Fedora list about the next
generation installer (Anaconda-based?) being able to pull from YUM-RPM
repositories at install-time for network installs.

Has anyone been tracking that development?



--
Bryan J. Smith   mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org