[lug] kickstart, RH7.3/KRUD

[bof]

D. Stimits wrote:

>I wanted to create a kickstart file based on my existing test install.
>There is plenty of documentation if I create the file by hand, but I was
>wondering if anyone here knows a way to extract a living RH 7.3 install
>and to auto-generate a kickstart file?
>

There should be in the /root directory a kickstart file 
"anaconda-ks.cfg" which, along with install.log, was created by RH 
during the installation.  You can hand edit it as needed and use it to 
duplicate your existing system. I don't think it will create the 
partitions unless you specifically edit it to do so.


>Slightly related, I can boot to windows and create a bootable floppy,
>but I'm not sure if there is a way to do that without windows (assuming
>I go with a floppy and not network). Creating a boot floppy via kernel
>build does not seem to be the correct way. What would be a good
>non-windows way to create the bootable floppy for kickstart?
>


If your system will not boot from CD, you should be able to create boot 
floppies under Linux by using the appropriate image disk from the images 
directory on the RH CD (or from 
http://www.redhat.com/apps/support/updates.html) with the dd command.

    dd if=boot.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=1440k

Also you might want to know that you can use a kickstart file during 
installation from a CD. Boot from the Red Hat Linux CD-ROM and direct 
the installation to use the kickstart file on a vfat filesystem floppy 
by passing kernel parameters.

boot: linux ks=hd:fd0/ks.cfg

See the Chapter 1 of the Customization Guide for a more detailed 
description of the Kickstart process along with lots of gory details 
about the kickstart file. It's at 
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-7.3-Manual/custom-guide

BOF