[CentOS] CentOS 7 kickstart question

[Paul Heinlein]

On Thu, 4 Aug 2016, Valeri Galtsev wrote:

>
> On Thu, August 4, 2016 7:13 pm, Paul Heinlein wrote:
>> On Thu, 4 Aug 2016, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
>>
>>> At least one snag I hit consistently with CentOS 7 kickstart is: 
>>> it drops me into human decision as far as wiping hard drive and 
>>> creating custom (or default probably as well) partitioning scheme 
>>> is concerned. Most likely it is me who needs to learn new trick 
>>> (like "tricking smart macintosh into actually doing what you want 
>>> done") as it looks like safety defeats my unattended kickstart 
>>> installation (like on Windows: "Do you really - really want to do 
>>> this?").
>>
>> It would have been helpful to see the disk-specific part of your 
>> kickstart file, but here's a snippet that's worked for me:
>>
>> clearpart --all --initlabel
>> zerombr
>> bootloader --location=mbr
>> part ...
>> part ...
>>
>> I've also noticed that LVM meta information will stick around during a
>> re-installation. So if you're reusing the names of volumes groups, you
>> might encounter an error. I do something like this in a %pre section:
>>
>> %pre --interpreter=/usr/bin/bash
>> # DANGER: will remove all volume groups
>> for VG in $(vgs -o vg_name --noheadings); do
>>    vgremove -f "$VG"
>> done
>> %end
>>
>
> Thanks Paul,
>
> here is my unsuccessful (requiring human intervention) kistart disk
> related part:
>
> # System bootloader configuration
> #bootloader --location=mbr --boot-drive=sda
> # Darn, they changed grub password encryption standard
> #bootloader --location=mbr --boot-drive=sda --append="crashkernel=no rhgb
> quiet" --md5pass=$1$F/BHluSk$YticIZvEKa6Ckmw6GYTno.
> bootloader --location=mbr --boot-drive=sda --append="crashkernel=no rhgb
> quiet"
> # Partition clearing information
> clearpart --all --initlabel --drives=sda
> # Disk partitioning information
> part /boot --fstype="xfs" --ondisk=sda --size=500 --asprimary
> part  [... other ops on sda ...]

The only bit you don't have is the "zerombr" directive. From the Red 
Hat documentation:

> If zerombr is specified, any invalid partition tables found on disks 
> are initialized. This destroys all of the contents of disks with 
> invalid partition tables. This command is required when performing 
> an unattended installation on a system with previously initialized 
> disks.

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html/Installation_Guide/sect-kickstart-syntax.html

-- 
Paul Heinlein <> heinlein at madboa.com <> http://www.madboa.com/