Re: Providing information during kickstart installations

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On Thu Sep 19 2002 at 11:02, Christopher Malek wrote:

> We do this here with a fair number of systems (~170) -- it's scalable
> given some infrastructure.
> 
> We use a standard DHCP kickstart floppy image, which causes the machine
> to get its ks.cfg from the file server pointed to by the "next-server"
> DHCP variable (and the "filename" variable), as John mentions.  Then we
> have a separate ks.cfg for every host which uses "network --bootproto
> static -ip <ip>", to make sure that all the machines use a static address
> after the reboot.  We've written a ks.cfg file generator which handles
> creating the ks.cfg for each host.
> 
> All the sysadmin has to do is run the ks.cfg generator for the host, add
> a record for the host to the DHCP server, and kickstart with the
> DHCP kickstart floppy.

Just to mention... loading the boot image itself from a network
server using PXE (with "cleaver" ks.cfg files) also works really
well to do this sort of per-host customisation.  And like dhcpd boot
images, it is *fast* :)

However, PXE also gives you the option to use a menu to choose
between a number of different boot options.  Kickstart can then
become one of only several possible options, loading a diskless
terminal-server client, a win/dos boot image, a rescue disk image,
or whatever.  Especially in an environment with a large number of
hosts that need to be used for different purposes depending on the
user's choice (such as a multi-purpose university computer lab or
whatever), pxe can be invaluable.

> Chris

Just my 5c worth :)

Cheers
Tony





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