[CentOS] Automated XFCE install from kickstart and epel-release issue

Fri Feb 15 16:42:16 UTC 2019
James Szinger <jszinger at gmail.com>

On Fri, Feb 15, 2019 at 3:01 AM <freebsd at tango.lu> wrote:
> I am working on a kickstart automated Centos 7 GUI vm deployment.
>
> Defining gnome desktop in kickstart works.
> @gnome-desktop - A GNOME desktop
>
> However Centos and anything from the epel-release such as xrdp does not
> work.
>
> I have tried it on different ways.
>
>
> repo --name=epel-release
> %packages
> #epel-release         # DOES NOT WORK
> @ Core                      #@core
> @ Base                      #@base
> @ X Window System           #@x11
> #@ XFCE                     # DOES NOT WORK
> @xfce-desktop        # DOES NOT WORK
> #@Server with GUI  # DOES NOT WORK
> #Xfce                # DOES NOT WORK
> #xrdp  # DOES NOT WORK
>
> I would also like to do a full system upgrade automatically.


You need to tell anaconda where to find the repo:

repo --name=EPEL --baseurl=http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/7/x86_64/

You can then use EPEL packages in the %packages section.  It's better
to point to a local or nearby mirror if you do this often.  Add
another line for the updates repo to get those installed.  My typical
kickstart file has lines like:

url --url=https://.../centos/7/os/x86_64/

repo --name=base    --baseurl=https://.../centos/7/os/x86_64/
repo --name=updates --baseurl=https:/.../centos/7/updates/x86_64/
repo --name=EPEL --baseurl=https://.../fedora-epel/7/x86_64/

I have successfully installed MATE and XFCE this way.

Jim