5.6. Kickstart Profiles

Kickstart profiles are the "recipes" that allow the installer to install the system with all of the configurations that the user wants. It is highly recommended that you review the "Kickstart Installations" Chapter of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Installation Guide available at the following URL:

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-5-manual/Installation_Guide-en-US/ch-kickstart2.html

This guide discusses all of the options available for customizing the installation.

5.6.1. Virtualization Types

All Kickstart profiles have a virtualization type associated with them:

None — This profile will be treated as not virtualized at all. Use this profile for normal re-provisioning, bare metal, and non-Xen or KVM installations (such as VMware, Virtage, etc.).
KVM Virtualized Guest — A KVM Guest. This is a supported feature for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 and newer.
Xen Fully-Virtualized Guest — This option requires hardware support on the host, but does not require a modified operating system in the guest.
Xen Para-Virtualized Guest — A virtual guest using Xen para-virtualiztion. Para-virtualiztion is the fastest virtualization mode and does not require any hardware support besides a PAE flag on the system CPU, but does require a modified operating system. The following versions are supported as guests under para-virtualization:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (Any Update supported)
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (Update 5 or later)
Xen Virtualization Host — A system that will host guests using Xen virtualization technology. This can support Xen paravirt guests, and can also support Xen fully-virtualized guests if the hardware itself supports it.

Note

Kickstarts created to be Xen hosts should include the kernel-xen package in the %packages section.

Kickstarts for KVM hosts should include the qemu package.

Fullvirt systems may require virtualization support to be turned on in the computer's BIOS.

5.6.2. Creating Kickstart Profiles

RHN Satellite supports two distinct methods of kickstart profile creation: Wizard-based and Raw. Wizard style kickstart profiles are generated and maintained by Satellite logic, with many hooks for user modification of kickstart parameters. The Raw method is a mechanism by which you have complete control over the content of the kickstart file: you write the file completely yourself or upload an existing pre-made Kickstart file, and are entirely responsible for its contents.

5.6.2.1. Wizard Style Kickstarts

To create a wizard style Kickstart:

Click on Systems => Kickstart => create a new kickstart profile
Provide an appropriate label, select the desired base channel and distribution
Select the Virtualization Type desired
Select next
You will be presented with an option to use the default download location or use a custom one. Select the default unless you're using a custom distribution. (If you are using a custom distribution, enter the location of its tree via a URI (http and ftp are supported)
Click next
Enter the root password
Click finish

At this point, Satellite generates a fully functional Kickstart file, which you can view by clicking Kickstart File.

5.6.2.2. Raw Style Kickstarts

To create a completely customizable Kickstart:

Click on Systems => Kickstart => upload new kickstart file
Provide an appropriate label
Select the desired Distribution
Select the appropriate virtualization type (see above)
If you have an existing kickstart file you can upload it using the file upload feature, otherwise simply copy and paste it into the File Contents box

Since the raw kickstart is completely written by the user, the Satellite server does not handle using the specified distro as the url in the kickstart. Because of this, you will want to include your own url --url option. It should look similar to the following:

url --url http://satellite.example.com/ks/dist/org/1/my_distro

Replace my_distro with the distro label and 1 with your org id.

Here is a sample raw kickstart that you may want to use as a starting point:

install
text
network --bootproto dhcp
url --url http://$http_server/ks/dist/org/1/ks-rhel-i386-server-5
lang en_US
keyboard us
zerombr
clearpart --all
part / --fstype=ext3 --size=200 --grow
part /boot --fstype=ext3 --size=200
part swap --size=1000   --maxsize=2000
bootloader --location mbr
timezone America/New_York
auth --enablemd5 --enableshadow
rootpw --iscrypted $1$X/CrCfCE$x0veQO88TCm2VprcMkH.d0
selinux --permissive
reboot
firewall --disabled
skipx
key --skip

%packages 
@ Base

%post
$SNIPPET('redhat_register')

Please note that $http_server is used in place of the Satellite's host name. This will be filled in when the kickstart template is rendered. Also the redhat_register snippet is used to handle registration.

Raw Kickstart