Starting a Kickstart Installation

To begin a kickstart installation, you must boot the system from a Red Hat Linux boot diskette or the CD-ROM and enter a special boot command at the boot prompt. If the kickstart file is located on a boot diskette that was created from the boot.img or bootnet.img image file, the correct boot command would be:

boot: linux ks=floppy

The linux ks=floppy command also works if the ks.cfg file is located on a vfat or ext2 filesystem on a floppy diskette and you boot from the Red Hat Linux CD-ROM.

An alternate boot command for booting off the Red Hat Linux CD-ROM and having the kickstart file on a vfat or ext2 filesystem on a floppy diskette is:

boot: linux ks=hd:fd0/ks.cfg

If you need to use a driver disk with kickstart, you can still have the kickstart file on a floppy disk:

boot: linux ks=floppy dd

The Red Hat Linux installation program looks for a kickstart file if the ks command line argument is passed to the kernel. The command line argument can take a number of forms:

ks=nfs:<server>:/<path>

The installation program will look for the kickstart file on the NFS server <server>, as file <path>. The installation program will use DHCP to configure the Ethernet card. For example, if your NFS server is server.example.com and the kickstart file is in the NFS share /mydir/ks.cfg, the correct boot command would be ks=nfs:server.example.com:/mydir/ks.cfg.

ks=http:<server>:/<path>

The installation program will look for the kickstart file on the HTTP server <server>, as file <path>. The installation program will use DHCP to configure the Ethernet card. For example, if your HTTP server is server.example.com and the kickstart file is in the HTTP directory /mydir/ks.cfg, the correct boot command would be ks=http:server.example.com:/mydir/ks.cfg.

ks=floppy

The installation program looks for the file ks.cfg on a vfat or ext2 filesystem on the floppy in drive /dev/fd0.

ks=hd:<device>/<file>

The installation program will mount the filesystem on <device> (which must be vfat or ext2), and look for the kickstart configuration file as <file> in that filesystem (for example, ks=hd:sda3/mydir/ks.cfg).

ks=file:/<file>

The installation program will try to read the file <file> from the filesystem; no mounts will be done. This is normally used if the kickstart file is already on the initrd image.

ks=cdrom:/<path>

The installation program will look for the kickstart file on CD-ROM, as file <path>.

ks

If ks is used alone, the installation program will configure the Ethernet card in the system using DHCP. The system will use the "bootServer" from the DHCP response as an NFS server to read the kickstart file from (by default, this is the same as the DHCP server). The name of the kickstart file is one of the following:

If DHCP is specified and the bootfile begins with a /, the bootfile provided by DHCP is looked for on the NFS server.
If DHCP is specified and the bootfile begins with something other then a /, the bootfile provided by DHCP is looked for in the /kickstart directory on the NFS server.
If DHCP did not specify a bootfile, then the installation program tries to read the file /kickstart/1.2.3.4-kickstart, where 1.2.3.4 is the numeric IP address of the machine being installed.

ksdevice=<device>

The installation program will use this network device to connect to the network. For example, to start a kickstart installation with the kickstart file on an NFS server that is connected to the system through the eth1 device, use the command ks=nfs:<server:>/<path> ksdevice=eth1 at the boot: prompt.