Chapter 9. Kickstart Installations

Table of Contents
Where to Put A Kickstart File
Starting a Kickstart Installation
The Kickstart File

Due to the need for automated installation, Red Hat has created the kickstart installation method. With this method, a system administrator can create a single file containing the answers to all the questions that would normally be asked during a typical Red Hat Linux installation. The kickstart installation method is powerful enough that often a single kickstart file can be used to install Red Hat Linux on multiple machines.

Please Note: Kickstart installations can only be performed using the CD-ROM and NFS installation methods. FTP, HTTP, SMB, or local hard disk installations cannot be automated using kickstart mode.

Where to Put A Kickstart File

To use kickstart mode, you must first create a kickstart file, and make it available to the Red Hat Linux installation program. Normally this is done by copying the kickstart file to the boot disk, or making it available on the network. The network-based approach is most commonly used, as most kickstart installations tend to be performed on networked computers. This also makes it easier to install Red Hat Linux on many computers, as the kickstart files can be kept on single server system, and read by the individual computers during the installation.

Let's take a more in-depth look at the locations where the kickstart file may be placed.

On Diskette

To perform a diskette-based kickstart installation, the kickstart file must be named ks.cfg, and reside in the boot disk's top-level directory. Note that the Red Hat Linux boot disks are in MS-DOS format, making it easy to copy the kickstart file under Linux using the mcopy command (or, if you insist, you can also use Windows). Although there's no technological requirement for it, most diskette-based kickstart installations install Red Hat Linux from CD-ROM.

On the Network

Network installations using kickstart are quite common, because system administrators can easily automate the installation of many networked computers quickly and painlessly. In general, the approach most commonly used is for the administrator to have both a BOOTP/DHCP server and an NFS server on the local network. The BOOTP/DHCP server is used to give the client system its networking information, while the NFS server serves the actual files used during the installation. Often these two servers run on the same physical machine, but there is no requirement for this.

To do a network-based kickstart installation, you must have a BOOTP/DHCP server on your network, and it must include configuration information for the machine you are attempting to install. The BOOTP/DHCP server will be used to give the client its networking information as well as the location of the kickstart file.

If a kickstart file is specified by the BOOTP/DHCP server, the client system will attempt an NFS mount of the file's path, and will copy the specified file to the client, using it as the kickstart file. The exact settings required vary depending on the BOOTP/DHCP server you use.

Here's an example for the DHCP server shipped with Red Hat Linux:

filename "/usr/new-machine/kickstart/";
next-server blarg.redhat.com;

Note that you should use filename for the kickstart file's name (or the directory in which the kickstart file resides) and next-server to set the NFS server name.

If the filename returned by the BOOTP/DHCP server ends with a slash ("/"), then it is interpreted as a path only. In this case, the client system mounts that path using NFS, and searches for a specially-named file. The filename the client searches for is:

<ip-addr>-kickstart

The <ip-addr<> section of the filename should be replaced with the client's IP address in dotted decimal notation. For example, the filename for a computer with an IP address of 10.10.0.1 would be 10.10.0.1-kickstart.

Note that if you don't specify a server name, then the client system will attempt to use the server that answered the BOOTP/DHCP request as its NFS server. If you don't specify a path or filename, the client system will try to mount /kickstart from the BOOTP/DHCP server, and will try to find the kickstart file using the same <ip-addr>-kickstart filename as described above.