Automation Installation Process of RHEL via Kickstart File

文/一觉亮天

Acronym and Abbr

OS - Operation System

RHEL - Red Hat Enterprise Linux

HTTP - Hyper Text Transfer Protocol

FTP - File Transfer Protocol

ISO - International Standard Organization, also sometimes stands for a kind of disk image format.

NFS - Net File System

 

What is kickstart file?

Normally, we choose specific options and press next button once and again during installing OS. In RHEL, we can automate the process using kickstart file.

 

In kickstart file, we can customize options and pre-installed packages. Once we have a kickstart file, we can install OS with the same config and tailored packages easily.

 

How to generate kickstart file?

Kickstart file will be generated automatically when you install the OS manually. You can tailor your OS manually so as to get a kickstart file. You can also edit the kickstart file through a plain text editor. The grammar is simple.

 

How to use kickstart file?

Take RHEL 5.5 as an example. Insert RHEL5.5 ISO to cdrom and config cdrom as the first boot device and restart the system. When I made the image of RHEL5.5, I put kickstart file in the root directory using UltraISO. You can put kickstart file in a HTTP or FTP or NFS server.  A boot prompt will show and waiting your instructions, such as kernel parameters. If you input nothing, the manual installation process will start in a moment.

 

Here, you can specify the kickstart file. Kickstart file can locate in HTTP Server, FTP server, NFS, cdrom, etc.  Please refer to 3 ways to locate kickstart file followed, including cdrom, NFS and HTTP.

 

boot: linux ks=cdrom:/ks-file.cfg

ks=nfs:server.example.com:/mydir/ks.cfg.

ks=http://<server>/<path>

 

By these means, the installation process will proceed complying with the kickstart file.