[Spacewalk-list] Spacewalk kickstart setup

[Jonathan DeHaan]

On 02/27/2012 02:36 AM, lee wrote:
> On 02/24/2012 05:17 PM, Jonathan DeHaan wrote:
>> Lee,
>>
>> There is no default root password. All Red Hat/Centos/Fedora
>> distributions ask for a root password during install, and do not
>> permit a blank root password. By setting the root password in the
>> kickstart, you are then no longer required to provide one during the
>> install. From a certain perspective, Spacewalk is giving you the
>> opportunity to set the default root password in the kickstart, but for
>> security reasons there is not a built-in default.
>>
>> You could save a few keystrokes by cloning your kickstart, which will
>> keep the root password from the original kickstart, but you need an
>> original to start with for that to be helpful.
>>
>> Jonathan
>>
>> On 02/24/2012 03:45 AM, lee wrote:
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> When I create a new kickstart in spacewalk, it asks for a root password
>>> for that kickstart, to be set. Is there away of having a default root
>>> password, that is set automatically without having to enter it.
>>>
>>> When you click the finish button it doesn't set a 'default' root
>>> password?
>>>
>>>
>>> Regards
>>> Lee
>>>
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>>> Spacewalk-list mailing list
>>> Spacewalk-list at redhat.com
>>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/spacewalk-list
> Hi
>
>
> Im creating a number of kickstarts for different boxes. some of which
> are similar. Ja, got the cloning bit, but it seems that spacewalk could
> do with a feature that sets a default root pass for all machines that is
> kickstarted and registered to say a specific spacewalk server???
>
> We most use secure keys as admin logins, and never really the password.
> So the password can be complex, and/or cycled.
>
> any ideas on this?
>
> Regards
> Lee
>
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Lee,

For security reasons, I doubt that such a feature would be accepted into 
the main SW tree. If you have the time and skills to create such a 
patch, you should check in with spacewalk-devel to make sure that it 
will be accepted before you spend the time.

If you really are creating so many kickstarts that typing in the root 
password twice for each is a problem, then you should look at using the 
API. There is a method called 'createProfile' which will create a new 
kickstart profile, and one of the required parameters is rootPassword. 
You should then be able to reuse the call to createProfile with the same 
root password as many times as you need.

-- Jonathan DeHaan
Linux Systems Engineer