Chapter 13. Semi-automated installations: Making Kickstart files available to the RHEL installer
After your Kickstart file is ready, you can make it available to for installation on the destination system.
13.1. Sharing the installation files on a local volume
This procedure describes how to store the Kickstart script file on a volume on the system to be installed. This method enables you to bypass the need for another system.
Prerequisites
- You have a drive that can be moved to the machine to be installed, such as a USB stick.
-
The drive contains a partition that can be read by the installation program. The supported types are
ext2,ext3,ext4,xfs, andfat. - The drive is connected to the system and its volumes are mounted.
Procedure
List volume information and note the UUID of the volume to which you want to copy the Kickstart file.
# lsblk -l -p -o name,rm,ro,hotplug,size,type,mountpoint,uuid
- Navigate to the file system on the volume.
- Copy the Kickstart file to this file system.
-
Make a note of the string to use later with the
inst.ks=option. This string is in the formhd:UUID=volume-UUID:path/to/kickstart-file.cfg. Note that the path is relative to the file system root, not to the/root of file system hierarchy. Replace volume-UUID with the UUID you noted earlier. Unmount all drive volumes:
# umount /dev/xyz ...Add all the volumes to the command, separated by spaces.
13.2. Sharing the installation files on a local volume for automatic loading
A specially named Kickstart file can be present in the root of a specially named volume on the system to be installed. This lets you bypass the need for another system, and makes the installation program load the file automatically.
Prerequisites
- You have a drive that can be moved to the machine to be installed, such as a USB stick.
-
The drive contains a partition that can be read by the installation program. The supported types are
ext2,ext3,ext4,xfs, andfat. - The drive is connected to the system and its volumes are mounted.
Procedure
List volume information to which you want to copy the Kickstart file.
# lsblk -l -p
- Navigate to the file system on the volume.
- Copy the Kickstart file into the root of this file system.
-
Rename the Kickstart file to
ks.cfg. Rename the volume as
OEMDRV:For
ext2,ext3, andext4file systems:# e2label /dev/xyz OEMDRVFor the XFS file system:
# xfs_admin -L OEMDRV /dev/xyz
Replace /dev/xyz with the path to the volume’s block device.
Unmount all drive volumes:
# umount /dev/xyz ...Add all the volumes to the command, separated by spaces.
