[rhelv6-beta-list] Kickstart. Is it expected to change a "minimal" install from 228 packages to 376?

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 11:23 AM, Dennis Marinus <dennis at marinus.nu> wrote:
> On 18 May 2010 16:06, David Cantrell <dcantrell at redhat.com> wrote:
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>>
>> On Tue, 18 May 2010, Justin Clift wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> Trying out kickstart things with RHEL 6 vm's at the moment.
>>>
>>> With a manual install of RHEL 6, using the "Minimal" install, there are
>>> 228 packages installed.
>>>
>>> Using the kickstart script Anaconda generated from that Minimal install,
>>> my expectation was for kick start installs to be the same.
>>> (ie 228 packages.)
>>>
>>> However, in reality the installs done using it have 376 packages.
>>>
>>> Not exactly a killer, but it's feels like a bug.
>>>
>>> Does anyone know if this is intended/expected, or if it's really a bug
>>> after all?
>>
>> Yes, this is expected and is not a bug.  The @core group definition in the
>> comps file (which is what the Minimal installation option is) only lists 228
>> packages by name, but remember that package dependency resolution happens,
>> so
>> those 228 packages actually end up requiring 148 additional packages.  So
>> you
>> can really think of a minimal install as actually being the 376 packages you
>> see installed since the 228 defined in @core won't really work without the
>> dependent packages.
>>
>
> Sorry, but I have to disagree. I even have the tests to prove it. :-)
> I didn't have a RHEL6 image available, so I've tested this using
> CentOS 5.5 x86_64. Only the number of RPMs should change, the behavior
> should be the same.
>
> 1. Deselect all groups during install. This results in 233 RPMs being installed.
>
> 2. Copy the generated anaconda-ks.cfg to a http server.
>
> 3. Do an install using ks=http://<your-server>/anaconda-ks.cfg. This
> results in 445 RPMs being installed.
>
> 4. Edit the anaconda-ks.cfg on the http server and add the --nobase
> option to the %packages section of the file. The --nobase switch is
> documented at http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5.5/html/Installation_Guide/s1-kickstart2-packageselection.html
> and at http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6-Beta/html/Installation_Guide/s1-kickstart2-packageselection.html.


Oh, dear lord. anaconda-ks.cfg has always been a problem. If you're
ever doing work with kickstart, it actually *throws out* all your
carefully written '%post' or '%pre' work.

To make sure you keep those, always add this to the end of ks.cfg files.

     %post --nochroot
     cp /tmp/ks.cfg /mnt/sysimage/root/ks.cfg

It's OK to add this as a separate %post stage, as well: It's an
undocumented feature that %post operations can be added as sequential,
separtate scripting macros, even though system-config-kickstart has no
idea of the concept and will only show the first one.

>
> 5. Repeat step 3. Notice that the number of RPMs is now 233, the same
> as a manual install.
>
> The 'bug' here is that Anaconda does not write the users choice of not
> selecting the @base group to the generated kickstart file (the
> --nobase parameter). However, this 'bug' is also present in every
> version of RHEL5 so it's pretty old and adding the --nobase option is
> usually the easiest part of customizing one's kickstart files.
>
> Kind regards,
> Dennis
>
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