Search

32.9.2. Making the Kickstart File Available on the Network

download PDF
Network installations using kickstart are quite common, because system administrators can quickly and easily automate the installation on many networked computers. 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 actual files used during the installation are served by the NFS server. Often, these two servers run on the same physical machine, but they are not required to.
Include the ks kernel boot option in the append line of a target in your pxelinux.cfg/default file to specify the location of a kickstart file on your network. The syntax of the ks option in a pxelinux.cfg/default file is identical to its syntax when used at the boot prompt. Refer to Section 32.11, “Starting a Kickstart Installation” for a description of the syntax and refer to Example 32.1, “Using the ks option in the pxelinux.cfg/default file” for an example of an append line.
If the dhcpd.conf file on the DHCP server is configured to point to /var/lib/tftpboot/pxelinux.0 on the BOOTP server (whether on the same physical machine or not), systems configured to boot over the network can load the kickstart file and commence installation.

Example 32.1. Using the ks option in the pxelinux.cfg/default file

For example, if foo.ks is a kickstart file available on an NFS share at 192.168.0.200:/export/kickstart/, part of your pxelinux.cfg/default file might include:
label 1
  kernel RHEL6/vmlinuz
  append initrd=RHEL6/initrd.img ramdisk_size=10000 ks=nfs:192.168.0.200:/export/kickstart/foo.ks
Red Hat logoGithubRedditYoutubeTwitter

Learn

Try, buy, & sell

Communities

About Red Hat Documentation

We help Red Hat users innovate and achieve their goals with our products and services with content they can trust.

Making open source more inclusive

Red Hat is committed to replacing problematic language in our code, documentation, and web properties. For more details, see the Red Hat Blog.

About Red Hat

We deliver hardened solutions that make it easier for enterprises to work across platforms and environments, from the core datacenter to the network edge.

© 2024 Red Hat, Inc.