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virtualeyes
Asked: 2012-09-11 06:11:07 +0800 CST

kickstart: reference floppy drive via %ksappend or %include

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Having trouble getting %ksappend or %include to work when referencing a local floppy drive.

Booting off remote server's cd-rom drive I am able to load the CentOS 6 minimal install image, and then add ks=hd:fd0/ks-jvm.cfg to boot params to load kickstart init file from floppy disk. That works fine.

The problem is that I want to load a streamlined generic init file off the floppy and then, within the init, %ksappend or %include specific config files relative to the type of server I'm building (JVM, MySQL, Apache, etc.)

I do not have DHCP, networking needs to be specified statically, so %ksappend and %include both fail when attempting to reference http://some-LAN-IP/foo.cfg since networking has not yet been set.

The kickstart setup only works when I glob in the entire config into a single file, which is great, but ugly and difficult to maintain when I return later, having forgotten the original setup.

At this point I'd be happy if I could get %ksappend or %include working with a floppy drive reference in the %post section; that would consolidate a lot of common boilerplate that all kickstarts will rely on (sshd_config, rsync config, resolve.conf, and so on)

Thanks for providing the magic floppy drive reference that is eluding me!

vmware-esxi

1 Answers

  1. OK, the solution is to break out your hammer and bash anaconda (or oneself for not knowing the answer) over the head:

    %pre
mkdir -p /tmp/floppy
mount /dev/fd0 /tmp/floppy
%end

    Now the floppy is accessible for %include -- unattended installer at work as I type here ;-)

    Going to try this with %ksappend as it appears this directive provides more flexibility/power.

    Major hassle getting setup with kickstart on a remote ESXi machine, but once in place it is a pretty nice reusable solution...

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