I had a similar problem over here...basically what I did was coded up a
web-based kickstart interface in PHP. It asks a few questions about the
hard drive configuration on the machine, machine hostname, ip address,
etc. etc. then generates a custom ks.cfg file which can either be
retrieved over the web (kickstart with linux
ks=http://location/of/ks.cfg) or copied onto a floppy.
The same could easily be done in Perl or just about any other langugage...
-vahram
Nick White wrote:
I have a variety of user types, hardware types, and RedHat distributions that I'm responsible for and I need to add some more automation into my Kickstarts to make them "smarter" and to perhaps enable users to load there own machines. I currently point to one of several kickstart configuration files on an NFS server, but maintaining many kickstart files is getting troublesome.
For example, if I need to start including a new package in new installs, I have to edit all of the kickstart files and add the package to the %package section. I tried using an %include statement and point to files that contained my base package lists, but I didn't get it right. Anaconda couldn't see the files I was referencing. I tried mounting the remote filesystems in the %pre section, but it still didn't see them. Anyway, that's just a example of how stupidly I'm doing things now.
I was intrigued by the idea that was brought up recently about using a CGI script to determine options. How would you run the CGI? Would you just do an HTTP GET from the %pre section and put the output in /tmp, then %include it? How would you pass parameters to the CGI (could you pass them in at the "boot" prompt)?
Thanks in advance,
Nick
_________________________________
Nick White
Systems Engineer
Landmark Graphics Corp.
