2.2.2. Kickstart

Previously, a Kickstart file that did not have a network line resulted in the assumption that DHCP is used to configure the network. This was inconsistent with the rest of Kickstart in that all other missing lines mean installation will halt and prompt for input. Now, having no network line means that installation will halt and prompt for input if network access is required. If you want to continue using DHCP without interruption, add network --bootproto=dhcp to your Kickstart file. Also, the --bootproto=query option is deprecated. If you want to prompt for network configuration in the first stage of installation, use the asknetwork option.

In previous versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the next-server DHCP option was used to specify an NFS server containing Kickstart files when the ks option is passed to the system without a value. This DHCP option has changed to server-name in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Traditionally, disks have been referred to throughout Kickstart by a device node name (such as sda). The Linux kernel has moved to a more dynamic method where device names are not guaranteed to be consistent across reboots, so this can complicate usage in Kickstart scripts. To accommodate stable device naming, you can use any item from /dev/disk in place of a device node name. For example, instead of:

part / --fstype=ext4 --onpart=sda1

part / --fstype=ext4 --onpart=sda1

You could use an entry similar to one of the following:

part / --fstype=ext4 --onpart=/dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:05.0-scsi-0:0:0:0-part1
part / --fstype=ext4 --onpart=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_6RA0C882-part1

part / --fstype=ext4 --onpart=/dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:05.0-scsi-0:0:0:0-part1
part / --fstype=ext4 --onpart=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160815AS_6RA0C882-part1

This provides a consistent way to refer to disks that is more meaningful than just sda. This is especially useful in large storage environments.

You can also use shell-like entries to refer to multiple disks. This is primarily intended to make it easier to use the clearpart and ignoredisk commands in large storage environments. For example, instead of:

ignoredisk --drives=sdaa,sdab,sdac

ignoredisk --drives=sdaa,sdab,sdac

You could use an entry similar to the following:

ignoredisk --drives=/dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:05.0-scsi-*

ignoredisk --drives=/dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:05.0-scsi-*

Kickstart will halt with an error in more cases than previous versions. For example, if you refer to a disk that does not exist, the installation will halt and inform you of the error. This is designed to help detect errors in Kickstart files before they lead to larger problems. As a side-effect, files that are designed to be generic across different machine configurations can fail more frequently. These must be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

The /tmp/netinfo file used for Kickstart network information has been removed. Anaconda now uses NetworkManager for interface configuration by default, and stores configuration in the ifcfg files in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/. It is possible to use this new location as a source of network settings for %pre and %post scripts.