Installation guide

To perform a pen-based flash memory kickstart installation, the kickstart file must be named
ks.cfg and must be located in the flash memory's top-level directory. Create the boot image
first, and then copy the ks.cfg file.
For example, the following transfers a boot image to the pen drive (/dev/sda) using the dd com-
mand:
dd if=diskboot.img of=/dev/sda bs=1M
Note
Creation of USB flash memory pen drives for booting is possible, but is heavily de-
pendent on system hardware BIOS settings. Refer to your hardware manufacturer
to see if your system supports booting to alternate devices.
8.2. Making the Kickstart File Available on the Network
Network installations using kickstart are quite common, because system administrators can eas-
ily automate the installation on many networked computers quickly and painlessly. In general,
the approach most commonly used is for the administrator to have both a BOOTP/DHCP server
and an NFS server on the local network. The BOOTP/DHCP server is used to give the client
system its networking information, while the actual files used during the installation are served
by the NFS server. Often, these two servers run on the same physical machine, but they are not
required to.
To perform a network-based kickstart installation, you must have a BOOTP/DHCP server on
your network, and it must include configuration information for the machine on which you are at-
tempting to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The BOOTP/DHCP server provides the client with
its networking information as well as the location of the kickstart file.
If a kickstart file is specified by the BOOTP/DHCP server, the client system attempts an NFS
mount of the file's path, and copies the specified file to the client, using it as the kickstart file.
The exact settings required vary depending on the BOOTP/DHCP server you use.
Here is an example of a line from the dhcpd.conf file for the DHCP server:
filename"/usr/new-machine/kickstart/"; next-server blarg.redhat.com;
Note that you should replace the value after filename with the name of the kickstart file (or the
directory in which the kickstart file resides) and the value after next-server with the NFS server
name.
If the file name returned by the BOOTP/DHCP server ends with a slash ("/"), then it is inter-
preted as a path only. In this case, the client system mounts that path using NFS, and searches
for a particular file. The file name the client searches for is:
<ip-addr>-kickstart
The <ip-addr> section of the file name should be replaced with the client's IP address in dotted
8.2. Making the Kickstart File Available on the Network
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