Starting a Kickstart Installation

To begin a kickstart installation, you must boot the system from a Red Hat Linux boot disk, and enter a special boot command at the boot prompt. If the kickstart file resides on the boot disk, the proper boot command would be:

boot: linux ks=floppy

If, on the other hand, the kickstart file resides on a server, the appropriate boot command would be:

boot: linux ks

Anaconda looks for a kickstart file if the ks command line argument is passed to the kernel. It can take a number of forms:

ks=floppy

The installation program looks for the file ks.cfg on a VFAT filesystem on the floppy in drive /dev/fd0.

ks=hd:<device>/<file>

The installation program will mount the filesystem on <device> (which must be VFAT or ext2), and look for the kickstart configuration file as <file> in that filesystem (for example, ks=hd:sda3/mydir/ks.cfg).

ks=file:/<file>

The installation program will try to read the file <file> from the filesystem; no mounts will be done. This is normally used if the kickstart file is already on the initrd image.

ks=nfs:<server:>/<path>

The installation program will look for the kickstart file on the NFS server <server>, as file <path>. The installation program will use DHCP to configure the Ethernet card.

ks=cdrom:/<path>

The installation program will look for the kickstart file on CD-ROM, as file <path>.

ks

If ks is used alone, the installation program will configure the Ethernet card in the system using DHCP. The system will use the "bootServer" from the DHCP response as an NFS server to read the kickstart file from (by default, this is the same as the DHCP server). The name of the kickstart file is one of the following:

If DHCP is specified and the "bootfile" begins with a /, that file is looked for on the NFS server.
If DHCP is specified and the "bootfile" begins with something other then a /, that file is looked for in the /kickstart directory on the NFS server.
If DCHP did not specify a "bootfile," then the installation program tries to read the file /kickstart/1.2.3.4-kickstart, where 1.2.3.4 is the numeric IP address of the machine being installed.