6.4.9.6. Kickstart ⇒ Distributions —

Enables you to identify custom installation trees that may be used for kickstarting. (Satellite users should note that this does not display Red Hat distributions provided to them. They can be found within the Distribution dropdown menu of the Kickstart Details page.) Before creating a distribution, you must make an installation tree available, as described in the Kickstart Installations chapter of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 System Administration Guide. This tree must be located in a public directory on an HTTP or FTP server.

To create a new distribution, enter an intuitive label (without spaces) in the Distribution Label field, such as my-orgs-rhel-as-4. In the External Location field, paste the URL to the base of the installation tree. (You can test this by appending "README" to the URL in a Web browser, pressing Enter, and ensuring that the distribution's readme file appears.)

In the Autokickstart RPM field, enter the auto-ks kernel image for the distribution. You can find all of the available packages by searching packages for "auto-kickstart". Identify the appropriate package based upon the distribution to be kickstarted. It should look something like, "auto-kickstart-ks-rhel-i386-as-4". Strip everything preceding the "ks" to derive the boot image. For instance, in the above example, you would enter "ks-rhel-i386-as-4" in the Autokickstart RPM field.

Select the matching distribution from the Base Channel and Installer Generation dropdown menus, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS (v.4 for x86) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, respectively. When finished, click the Create button.