Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Commonly used kickstart files
  3. Kickstart configuration
    1. Security
    2. User accounts
    3. NTP configuration on VMs
  4. Starting a kickstart install
  5. References

Introduction

Kickstart is a method for automated installation of Red Hat and Fedora like linux distros. It contains installation steps that would normally be performed manually during a typical installation.

Commonly used kickstart files

The kickstart files are currently available thru atlab's internal network. Following is a list of kickstart files commonly used in atlab installs. I am following a naming convention as ks-<number>*.cfg. The <number> indicates disk size in GB.

  • Minimal installs
    • ks8.cfg: Minimal install
    • ks8-x.cfg: Minimal install with X windows
    • ks8-x-gnome.cfg: Minimal install with X windows and GNOME desktop environment
  • SG-OSG
    • ks8-voms.cfg: VOMS install
    • ks8-ce.cfg: Compute element install
  • Lustre
    • ks8-lustre-client.cfg: Lustre client install

Kickstart configuration

Security

  • SELinux is disabled by default.
  • Firewall is disabled by default, but HTTP, SSH, telnet, and SMTP ports are opened in the configuration.

User accounts

  • The post-install step will create three non-root user accounts viz. jpr, ppr, and ssp. Non-root users will be forced to change their password after first successful login. The passwords included in the kickstart file are in encrypted format. The root password is encrypted using md-5 based password algorithm and non-root account passwords are encrypted using crypt (standard unix password algorithm). You may change the password and encryption method. For more info, see: 
    openssl passwd -help
man crypt

NTP configuration on VMs

The VMware knowledge base has an article on timekeeping best practices for linux. The CentOS wiki provides CentOS specific instructions for timekeeping in VMware guests. Following is a summary of NTP conf in the kickstart file.

  • The kickstart file includes divider option and clock source as specified in the VMware documentation: 
    divider=10 
clocksource=acpi_pm
  • I had included patch for ntp.conf file and step-tickers configuration in the kickstart file, but it didn't fix the timekeeping issue. Current configuration does not include any NTP conf patch except ks8-ntp-test.cfg kickstart file.

Starting a kickstart install

For a HTTP based method, save your kickstart file in a web accessible location. The kickstart installation can be started using following command: 

linux ks=<kiskstart-file-location>

References