Using Kickstart under Red Hat 6.2

Simper, Brian D brian.d.simper@intel.com
Tue, 30 Jan 2001 15:16:53 -0800


I am responsible for producing an installation of Red Hat Linux 6.2 for my 
employer.  I am not trying to install anything beyond what comes on the CD,
but 
I do have several specific packages that need to be placed on the target 
machines (i.e., korn shell) and certain packages that should not at all be 
placed on the machines (i.e., games).  I would prefer to have the
distribution 
run using Kickstart rather than use a process that requires an engineer to
site 
at a console and select package groups and disk slicing.

I have been unsuccessful in getting any kickstart to work yet.  I think I
have a
reasonable kickstart file, but I am not sure what I might be doing wrong.  I
am 
trying to run the install from a CD and floppy first, but may try to have it
run 
over the network if I can get at least the CD/floppy combo to work.  I am
trying 
to get this to run on Red Hat 6.2 so far and will try 7.0 in the future.  

I merely added the ks.cfg file to a regular boot floppy created with the
rawrite 
program.  When I get the "boot:" prompt I typed "linux ks=floppy" and the 
process runs for a while then gets to a blue background screen.  I then can
hear 
the CD-ROM trying to run and the "Welcome to Red Hat Linux" text message 
appears.  A few seconds after that the system starts pumping out badly
formatted 
error messages which quickly run off the screen then it unceremoniously
spits 
out the CD and halts.

I have done lots of RH6.2 installs with this CD including my own workstation
but 
I can't seem to get kickstart to run.  The KS.CFG is appended.  Any ideas?

--begin KS.CFG------------------------------------
lang en_US
network --bootproto dhcp
cdrom
keyboard us
zerombr yes
clearpart --all
part / --size 1024 --grow
part /boot --size 20
part /tmp --size 128
part swap --size 128
part /var --size 256
part /usr --size 1280
install
mouse generic3ps/2
timezone --utc
xconfig --defaultdesktop=GNOME --startxonboot
rootpw --iscrypted $1$2ss5z.mT$H7k5N4b5LpV1g50kupcMM0
auth --useshadow --enablemd5 
lilo --location mbr

%packages
@ Base
@ X Window System
@ GNOME
@ KDE
@ Mail/WWW/News Tools
@ DOS/Windows Connectivity
@ Networked Workstation
@ NFS Server
@ SMB (Samba) Server
@ Development
@ Kernel Development
@ Utilities
@ Server

%pre

%post
--end KS.CFG-----------------------------------------

Thanks,

Brian Simper
Linux Product Engineer
Intel Corporation