Kickstart support info

[Marc MERLIN]

On Mon, Apr 11, 2005 at 07:07:31PM +0100, Colin Watson wrote:
> Most things that the code can do are possible; there are a few
> exceptions, mostly in the partitioner. Preseeding (don't call this
> automatic installation mode "d-i", please - Kickstart is part of our d-i
> too) is direct control of the debconf database. Our Kickstart support is

Aaah, I didn't realize it just presed d-i. That makes more sense than what I
thought (completely different install mode)
That's very nice, thanks for coming up with that.

> in fact more or less a translation layer on top of preseeding, so mixing
> the two is entirely possible.

Even better. Does this mean that you give both preseed files on the command
line and d-i will sort it out?

> > My requirements are:
> > - I need a fully automated install: the installer cannot stop to ask
> >   questions, it has to do a full unattended install
> 
> That should be possible. If it isn't, I consider it a high-priority bug.

I figured, just making sure :)

> > - I absolutely need %pre and %post support
> 
> That's fine. Note that the only interpreter available outside the chroot
> is /bin/sh.

Right, I had only read 
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/KickstartCompatibility
then, which said no %pre.
Cool.

Can I use %packages too?

> > - md and lvm would be nice, but they don't seem supported yet, and I can
> >   probably kludge in %pre as long as the installer then knows who to use
> >   the partitions I created and mounted
> 
> Yeah, those are two of the partitioning-related exceptions I mentioned
> above. Disk detection before %pre will be fun (though the way hotplug
> happens early may save you here, provided that your disk modules are in
> the initrd), and you may have to preseed a few bits of the partitioner
> by hand, which is likely to be messy. I'm sorry this is far from ideal
> as yet.

As long as I can work around it, it's a whole lot better than nothing :)
I do realize that it's hard to get right, even RH doesn't have it working
perfectly after 5-6 years of having come up with kickstart.

> Basically you'll need to mount /target etc., and then convince the
> partitioner to run straight through without modifying anything.

I figured that'd be the case.
So what would I put in kickstart then for partitions? 
Will d-i work if the partitions are mounted and I put nothing in the
kickstart part section?

> > Stuff like this has to work though:
> > network --bootproto dhcp --device=eth0
> > (it can't stop to ask for eth0 or eth1. Ideally, it would dhcp on both
> > interfaces and use the first one it got an answer on, but hardcoding
> > eth0 would be ok)
> 
> That's fine. --device=auto will try the first one it can find with a
> link (assuming MII/ethtool works).
 
Perfect, thanks :)
 
> > For the rest, random package questions, I'm hoping I can delay those until
> > after they get installed (haven't looked into how debconf seeding for
> > random packages works, or how ubuntu pre-answers questions for so many
> > debian packages)
> 
> The only question that ever gets asked is the X resolutions question,
> and even that's only on certain hardware. Last I checked that was hard
> to preseed; I haven't rechecked with Hoary final yet.

Not to worry. I use the nvidia driver and ship my on XF86Config file anyway.
So as long as I can tell the package not to ask anything, I'll be all set.

Actually, is there a generic way to preseed a question disable: can I tell
xorg: don't generate config file?
I suppose you can't do that in the %packages section of kickstart, but you
can do it in a separate d-i preseed that I'd load too?

> As I said above, they aren't mutually exclusive. You can try Kickstart
> for the subset of things that Kickstart supports, and use a preseed file
> for fine control. It's unlikely that many things not supported by
> preseed will be supported by Kickstart, but they may be easier to set
> up.
 
Understood.
 
> > http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/hoary/main/installer-i386/current/doc/manual/en/ch04s06.html#id2531034
> > looks newer (BTW, it's not exactly easy to find :)
> 
> The latter is the best I currently have available, I'm afraid. I believe
> it has a complete list of differences from the referenced Red Hat
> documentation.

That's quite all right, it's good to know.

Eventually, some examples of kickstart files that are ok, info on using
kickstart+preseed and what overrides what, and so forth would be useful, but
I'll see if I can contribute example files to you after I sort this out
(if you don't have any yourself)

Thanks
Marc
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