Chapter 1 Kickstart Installations; What Are Kickstart Installations; How Do You Perform A Kickstart Installation - Red Hat LINUX 7.2 - OFFICIAL LINUX CUSTOMIZATION GUIDE Manual

Section 1.2:How Do You Perform a Kickstart Installation?
1 Kickstart Installations

1.1 What are Kickstart Installations?

Many system administrators would prefer to use an automated installation method to install Red Hat
Linux on their machines. To answer this need, Red Hat created the kickstart installation method. Using
kickstart, a system administrator can create a single file containing the answers to all the questions that
would normally be asked during a typical Red Hat Linux installation.
Kickstart files can be kept on single server system, and read by individual computers during the instal-
lation. This installation method can support the use of a single kickstart file to install Red Hat Linux
on multiple machines, making it ideal for network and system administrators.
Kickstart lets you automate most of a Red Hat Linux installation, including:
• Language selection
• Mouse configuration
• Keyboard selection
• Boot loader installation
• Disk partitioning
• Network configuration
• NIS, LDAP, Kerberos, Hesiod, and Samba authentication
• Firewall configuration
• Package selection
• X Window System configuration

1.2 How Do You Perform a Kickstart Installation?

Kickstart installations can be performed using a local CD-ROM, a local hard drive, or via NFS, FTP
or HTTP.
To use kickstart mode, you must first create a kickstart file (ks.cfg), and make it available to the
Red Hat Linux installation program.
1.2.1 Where to Put A Kickstart File
A kickstart file must be placed in one of two locations:
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