[CentOS] Centos7 kickstart & pxe

Mon Sep 5 07:41:03 UTC 2016
johan.vermeulen7 at telenet.be <johan.vermeulen7 at telenet.be>


----- Original Message -----
From: "James A. Peltier" <jpeltier at sfu.ca>
To: "CentOS mailing list" <centos at centos.org>
Sent: Saturday, August 20, 2016 1:06:14 AM
Subject: Re: [CentOS] Centos7 kickstart & pxe



----- Original Message -----
| 
| 
| ----- Original Message -----
| From: "John Hodrien" <J.H.Hodrien at leeds.ac.uk>
| To: "CentOS mailing list" <centos at centos.org>
| Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2016 4:47:09 PM
| Subject: Re: [CentOS] Centos7 kickstart & pxe
| 
| On Thu, 18 Aug 2016, johan.vermeulen7 at telenet.be wrote:
| 
| > Hello All,
| >
| > I'm trying to get kickstart to work through pxe.
| > So far I've set up dhcp server, tftp and so on.
| > But it seems at some point I always get stuck because the iso file is
| > write-protected.
| >
| > I've tried remounting it rw, and I 've dd the iso first, I then get EM not
| > a block device.
| 
| I'd always tend to just expose the install image via HTTP.
| 
| jh
| 
| Hello John,
| 
| thanks for the reply.
| I found a useful tutorial on kickstart/http here:
| http://www.tomsitpro.com/articles/kickstart-linux-automation,2-798.html
| but if I understand it right, via http is not an unattended install. You have
| to have a boot medium.
| 
| If I'm correct people do unattended installs all the time, so I don't
| understand why all the tutorials I try fail on the same point.
| I must be doing something wrong.
| 
| What I did on my last try was:
| 
| Download Centos dvd to /tmp
| mount -o loop /path/to/centos-dvd.iso  /mnt
| rsync -azvp /mnt/*  /var/ftp/pub/
| 
| But subsequently I can't change anything in /var/ftp/pub because of read-only
| file system.
| 
| Greetings, J.


Basically in order to boot from the network you need the contents of os/$arch/images/pxeboot/ for your system architecture.  You can then use kickstart to point to a media you want to use for the actual installation.  This can be that of cdrom, url, nfs, etc.  You pass the kickstart parameter to your client using the 'ks=' parameter.  the installation media can be from a local rsync of the CentOS repository (to save money) or to a mirror of your choice that may be local to you.  Feel free to ask any questions.

-- 
James A. Peltier
IT Services - Research Computing Group
Simon Fraser University - Burnaby Campus
Phone   : 604-365-6432
Fax     : 778-782-3045
E-Mail  : jpeltier at sfu.ca
Website : http://www.sfu.ca/itservices
Twitter : @sfu_rcg
Powering Engagement Through Technology


Hello All,

although this post is a few weeks old;
following the advise to use http and to use the ks= parameter, I was able to set this up.

So with the help of some volunteers we set up a Centos-install-fest here at work and
installed some 30 laptops in an hour.

(More would have been possible, the limited factor was the number of Internet cables I could muster.)

So many thanks.
Greetings, J.
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