Chapter 27. Kickstart Installations

Kickstart installations offer a means to automate the installation process, either partially or fully. Kickstart files contain answers to all questions normally asked by the installation program, such as what time zone you want the system to use, how the drives should be partitioned, or which packages should be installed. Providing a prepared Kickstart file when the installation begins therefore allows you to perform the installation automatically, without need for any intervention from the user. This is especially useful when deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux on a large number of systems at once.

Kickstart files can be kept on a single server system and read by individual computers during the installation. This installation method can support the use of a single Kickstart file to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux on multiple machines, making it ideal for network and system administrators.

All Kickstart scripts and the log files of their execution are stored in the /tmp directory to assist with debugging installation failures.