Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Cookbook

Creating a kickstart file

A kickstart file is essentially a file containing all the necessary answers to questions that are asked during a typical install. It was created by Red Hat in response to the need for automated installs. Using kickstart, an admin can create one file or template containing all the instructions.

There are three ways to create a kickstart file:

• By hand
• Using the GUI's system-config-kickstart tool
• Using the standard Red Hat installation program Anaconda

In this recipe, I will cover a combination of the first two.

Getting ready

Before we can get down to the nitty-gritty of generating our base kickstart file or template, we need to install system-config-kickstart. Run the following command:

~# yum install -y system-config-kickstart ...