[CentOS] CentOS 4.x - Kickstart

Fri Mar 17 01:36:46 UTC 2006
Collins Richey <crichey at gmail.com>

On 3/16/06, Tom Brown <tom.brown at goodtechnology.com> wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 16 Mar 2006, Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:
> >
> >> http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/sysadmin-guide/ch-kickstart2.html
> >>
> >>
> >> IMO, the 2 best options are PXE or take boot.iso and modify the 'ks'
> >> entry to point at a ks.cfg file on a web server.
> >
> > Or, use the boot.iso and
> >
> > 1. Do "linux ks=http://your.config.server/ks/ks.cfg" at boot prompt
> > 2. Drink morning coffee, read RSS feeds, or chat at water cooler
> > 3. Reboot new server
> >
> > If you've got a fully patched installation tree and decent
> > configuration-management setup, it often takes less than 30 minutes
> > from booting the boot.iso image to putting a machine into full-bore
> > testing or even production.
> >
> thanks all thats _exactly_ what i'm after
>

We also had good luck with NFS mounted installation trees, but our
security gurus have NFS phobia, so we've switched to the http method
as well, and it works like a champ. The only drawback is that we do a
fair amount of customization (desktops, not servers), and with http
you can't just mount a directory and execute scripts. So, I create a
tarball of the %post scripts and untar it to run the %post
customization steps. Once I have all the customization steps down for
the ....4 release, I won't have to recreate the tarball on an
hourly/daily basis <grin>.

This is RHEL4, of course, but it works the same for CentOS.

--
Collins Richey
      The agnostic dyslexic insomniac lies awake wondering if there is a dog.