[COLUG] Kickstart howto...

[Richard Holbert]

Tom Hanlon wrote:
> Hey folks,
>
> Contemplating kickstart.
>
> My scenario is this..
>
> I am faced with a room of 12 identical machines. I put the centos DVD 
> in machine one and install. No huge hassles, I tweaked the BIOS for 
> some SATA ahcpi or something or other and then I started with 
> linux-general-ide=all or something and nommconf..
>
> So it installs and it looks good.
>
> How do I clone that install with kickstart ?
>
> Do I just grab the /root/anaconda.ks file and somehow make that 
> available to the next machine, boot from the DVD again but pass the 
> installer the kickstart script ?
>
> Most Kickstart installs assume something more complicated than what I 
> face. What would be the quick steps for me to kickstart a roomfull of 
> machines?
>
> Would I be better off making one a server and netboot ?
>
> Any help or advice including links to good docs are always welcome.
Tom,

You can make the DVD iso image available via NFS, HTTP, or FTP.  The 
kickstart file can also be made available via HTTPS.  Netboot via PXE 
might also be in order.  I think you'll find writeups on colug.net or 
owlriver.com.

Another way to do this would be to use udpcast to clone your new master 
machine.  This works really well if it's configured to use DHCP.

http://freshmeat.net/projects/udpcast/

Rick