CERN IT Official Pages on Kickstart at CERN

• http://cern.ch/linux/aims/
• http://cern.ch/linux/scientific3/docs/kickstart.shtml

Making kickstart files

• For a standard SLC3 installation, you can just copy the example in the page http://cern.ch/linux/scientific3/docs/kickstart.shtml and modify ip address, xconfig, rootpw etc.
• If you have once installed the PC manually, you can utilise /root/anaconda-ks.cfg to know what you should write in your kickstart file.
• If you have many nodes to install with the same setup, it would be convenient to utilise the user tools provided by CERN IT. (see http://cern.ch/linux/aims/)

Network boot and Kickstart

1. Your system must be registered in the CERN LANDB (http://network.cern.ch/).
2. Your system must be capable and enabled for PXE boot (see the BIOS settings).
3. Put your kickstart files in the proper directory on AFS. You should first ask the linux.support@cernNOSPAMPLEASE.ch to have it.
4. The kickstart files on AFS are synchronised to the kickstart server after a while. If you cannot wait, you can force the synchronisation with

    aims sync 

5. Register your kickstart file with

    aims [-hw $HW_Address ] -ks $Path_to_the_kickstart_file 

6. Now you can see what is registered with

    aims show $IP_Name 

7. Enable the PXE boot on the server

    aims pxeon $IP_Name $Release-Arch 

   eg. $Release-Arch = SLC306-i386
8. Then, aims tells you "Turned off IT-CS HCP replies for ". This means IT/CS server does not answer to DHCP request from your host. You can also check this by seeing the information in the LANDB http://network.cern.ch/ in the field HCP Response. If this is not disabled, IT/CS server sends the default kickstart file to the host. Then it starts the same procedure as if you started with a bootdisk.
9. If you don't see "This system CANNOT obtain and IP address automatically" in the "HCP Response" field, you should issue "aims pxeoff" and "aims pxeon".
10. Now you can boot your PC with PXE boot. Then, Kickstart begins.
11. For the moment, Kickstart fails with an error message;

    OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/mnt/sysimage/tmp/ks-script'

    you can just ignore this error and reboot the system.

Kickstart from the local disk

• You can also kickstart from the local disk of your system.
• One way is to make a bootfloppy using 'kickstart-me' tool. (see http://cern.ch/linux/aims/)
• The other way is to copy necessary files to the local harddisk and boot the PC using them.

1. put your kickstart file on the local hd, for eg. /boot/ks/ks.cfg.
2. put the kernel and initrd images on the local hd;

   cp -p /afs/cern.ch/project/linux/cern/slc30X/i386/images/pxeboot/{initrd.img,vmlinuz} /boot/ks

3. make the grub.conf adequately, for eg.

   grubby --title='Kickstart Reinstallation' --make-default --copy-default \
          --add-kernel=/boot/ks/vmlinuz --initrd=/boot/ks/initrd.img \
          --args='text ks=hd:hda1:/boot/ks/ks.cfg'

4. Now you reboot and kickstart begins.

-- UedaI - 23 Feb 2006