[Fedora-xen] Automated installations via kickstart

Kwan Lowe kwan at digitalhermit.com
Wed Mar 29 10:31:01 UTC 2006


Whoohoo! Finally got xen/kickstart to do a complete hands-off installation.  The
goal is to be able to provision an OS for a customer (internal/external) with as
little interaction as possible, giving me more time to drink my coffee :D. The
kickstart piece makes it as easy/easier than AIX NIM installations...

I used the anaconda_ks.cfg from a previously installed domU and made a few changes.
To use it with xenguest-install.py you need to specify the kickstart file with the
"-x" option:

xenguest-install.py -n xm-fc4-004 \
   -f /dev/rootvg/xm-fc4-004_lv \
   -r 256 -l ftp://192.168.8.21/pub \
   -x ks=ftp://192.168.8.21/xm-fc4-004_ks.cfg

The kickstart file follows.
Some notes:
If you start with an anaconda generated file you need to add the keyboard directive.
For some reason it does not save this information (bug??).  The zerombr directive
will also destroy the existing LVM volume so use with care. The rootpw directive
needs to be changed in the example. You'd probably want to change the bootproto
option also. I'm hand-editing the IP info because I already have DNS entries.


  # Kickstart file automatically generated by anaconda.

  install
  url --url ftp://192.168.8.21//pub
  lang en_US.UTF-8
  keyboard us
  network --device eth0 --bootproto static --ip 192.168.8.64 --netmask 255.255.255.0
  --gateway 192.168.8.1 --nameserver 192.168.8
  rootpw --iscrypted $1$ma1gooDL$myPaSsw0rdhashwh000h000
  firewall --enabled --port=22:tcp
  authconfig --enableshadow --enablemd5
  selinux --disabled
  timezone America/New_York
  bootloader --location=mbr --driveorder=xvda
  reboot
  zerombr yes
  clearpart --all
  part /boot --fstype ext3 --size=100
  part swap --size=256

  part pv.00 --size=1 --grow --asprimary

  volgroup rootvg pv.00
  logvol / --name root_lv --vgname=rootvg --size=400
  logvol swap --name swap_lv --vgname=rootvg --size=256
  logvol /usr --name usr_lv --vgname=rootvg --size=2000
  logvol /tmp --name tmp_lv --vgname=rootvg --size=200
  logvol /var --name var_lv --vgname=rootvg --size=200
  logvol /home --name home_lv --vgname=rootvg --size=400

  %packages
  @admin-tools
  @base
  @core
  @dns-server
  @editors
  @text-internet
  @web-server
  comps-extras
  cracklib-dicts
  gnome-mime-data
  rmt
  tzdata

  %post




-- 
* The Digital Hermit   http://www.digitalhermit.com
* Unix and Linux Solutions   kwan at digitalhermit.com




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