Installation guide

18 Chapter 1. Kickstart Installations

1.3. Creating the Kickstart File

The kickstart ﬁle is a simple text ﬁle, containing a list of items, each identiﬁed by a keyword.

You can create it by editing a copy of the sample.ks ﬁle found in the RH-DOCS directory

of the Red Hat Linux Documentation CD, using the Kickstart Conﬁgurator application, or

writing it from scratch. The Red Hat Linux installation program also creates a sample kick-

start ﬁle based on the options that you selected during installation. It is written to the ﬁle

/root/anaconda-ks.cfg. You should be able to edit it with any text editor or word proces-

sor that can save ﬁles as ASCII text.

First, be aware of the following issues when you are creating your kickstart ﬁle:

• Items must be speciﬁed in order. That order is:

• Command section — Refer to Section 1.4 for a list of kickstart options. You must include

the required options.

• The %packages section — Refer to Section 1.4.29 for details.

• The %pre and %post sections — These two sections can be in any order and are not

required. Refer to Section 1.4.30 and Section 1.4.31 for details.

• Items that are not required can be omitted.

• Omitting any required item will result in the installation program prompting the user

for an answer to the related item, just as the user would be prompted during a typical

installation. Once the answer is given, the installation will continue unattended (unless it

ﬁnds another missing item).

• Lines starting with a pound sign ("#") are treated as comments and are ignored.

• For kickstart upgrades, the following items are required:

• Language

• Installation method

• Device speciﬁcation (if device is needed to perform installation)

• Keyboard setup

• The upgrade keyword

• LILO conﬁguration

If any other items are speciﬁed for an upgrade, those items will be ignored (note that this

includes package selection).

1.4. Kickstart Options

The following options can be placed in a kickstart ﬁle. If you prefer to use a graphical in-

terface for creating your kickstart ﬁle, you can use the Kickstart Conﬁgurator application.

Refer to Chapter 2 for details.