Redhat "Linux" kickstart procedures for NCAR/ACD

"Kickstart" allows us to automate a Redhat Linux install in a way that removes a lot of manual steps in the process. Manual steps that we previously had to do but which are now automated by kickstart include:

Saving off /etc/passwd, nrnet, product license files, etc.
Manually adding users after an install
Configuring X-Windows after an install
Creating a boot sector for the Windows NT boot loader
Creating gnome configurations for users
Partitioning the disk
Many post-install operations to get a workstation up and running

Now, with kickstart, we've largely automated the above leaving only a few steps after installation. A kickstart can happen within a half hour, giving us an excellent form of disaster recovery. Moreover, a diskette can be inserted, a kickstart started, and the Sysadmin can just walk away, return a half hour later, press ENTER and the machine boots off of that same diskette (the kickstart has overwritten the kickstart boot image with an image that can boot the machine).

The basic kickstart design in ACD involves these steps:

We have pre-prepared kickstart boot diskettes. These diskettes contain the bootnet.img and pcmcia.img from the Redhat distribution. The diskettes are prepared as follows:
- dd if=bootnet-RHEA-1999_044.img of=/dev/fd0H1440
- mount -t vfat /dev/fd0H1440 /mnt
- cd /mnt
- vi syslinux.cfg and change the prompt to 0, the default to "ks" and remove the timeout field.
- umount /mnt
- dd if=/dev/fd0H1440 of=bootnet.img
- copy the bootnet.img file to /redhat/61
- Repeat for pcmcia-RHEA-1999_044.img to acd:/redhat/61/pcmcia.img
- Now to manufacture diskettes (we recommend making lots), just dd those images from acd:/redhat/61/bootnet.img or acd:/redhat/61/pcmcia.img onto floppies (that is, dd if=bootnet.img of=/dev/fd0H1440). The bootnet floppy is for a standard desktop and the pcmcica floppy is for a laptop with PCMCIA and 3COM ethernet on a PC card.
Prepare a system for a Kickstart upgrade if needed
- Use fdisk to change the partition types of any Linux partition you want to preserve. Change those types to FAT32 and then after the install is complete, you can change them back to EXT2.
Insert diskette
boot computer
The floppy image initiates the kickstart. The actual kickstart script is acquired from the DHCP server (net.acd.ucar.edu). The DHCP daemon informs the kickstart process where to find the kickstart script. The kickstart scripts are named by IP address and obtained from net:/jp/kickstart. For example net:/jp/kickstart/128.117.32.140-kickstart.
Control is passed to the kickstart script (e.g., 128.117.32.140-kickstart) which then installs Redhat Linux on a system
Once Redhat Linux is installed, the script passes control to a postinstall script which is located on acd:/redhat/61/kickstart.postinstall.sh. The postinstall script creates NCAR-specific files such as /etc/group, /etc/automounter, /etc/printcap, etc., and installs additional RPMS, both RPMS local to NCAR like NCAR Graphics, and RPMS that we need such as LPRng and SSH.
The last steps of the kickstart.postinstall.sh script involve creating a bootsect.lnx file in case the machine uses an NT boot loader. That bootsect.lnx file is uuencoded and mailed to the Sysadmins. And also stored in /root so that explore2fs on the NT side can read it. The explore2fs explorer for Windows NT can be obtained at http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs.htm. The kickstart takes over from the floppy disk image and installs Redhat Linux.
The kickstart diskette is still in the drive. When the kickstart script is nearly complete, it overwrites that diskette with a LILO bootable floppy image so that we have something off of which to boot the machine. The Sysadmin only has to press RETURN and the system will reboot off of the new diskette.
After rebooting, there's a few things to be done which include
- Verify everything of course :-) Especially test licensed products such as IDL and the Portland compiler.
- Edit /etc/inittab and change "id:3:initdefault:" to "id:5:initdefault:" if you want the gdm splash screen at login time.
- Change the root password (the kickstart uses a simple easily guessable password)
- If you saved Linux partitions in the first step, go ahead and change their partition types back to EXT2 and change /etc/fstab to mount them.
- Go into NT and modify the boot loader so that we can boot. test.
  - Grab the bootsect.lnx file using explore2fs or what have you.
  - Turn off read-only on boot.ini

Machine Requirements

Kickstarts involve standardizing our machine configurations over what we have now. And initially, there's probably going to be work involved to accomplish the following:

Both NT and Linux must be on the primary disk. If the disk is too small for that, we'll need to swap disks around to make this happen. Roughly disk requirements are minimally 3GB as shown below. Of course more is better, especially with modern IDE drives being so inexpensive.
- NT: 2GB
- Linux /usr: 1.5GB
- Linux swap: 0.2GB+
- Linux /home: 0.5GB+
A machine must also be on the network. Our environment makes doing a CD-ROM kickstart impractical because too many things change too quickly. By maintaining net:/jp/kickstart and acd:/redhat/61/kickstart.postinstall.sh, we can continuously upgrade the environment which will be installed when the next kickstart takes place.

Preinstall procedures

To prepare a machine for kickstart, there's a few things we have to do to make it ready.

Configure DHCP and add an entry for the machine. Be sure to restart dhcpd to reread the /etc/dhcpd.conf file. To add an entry, we'll need to know the Ethernet MAC address of the machine. The entry in /etc/dhcpd.conf on net.acd will look something like this entry for babbage:
```
host babbage {
   hardware ethernet 0:10:4b:64:19:3e;
   fixed-address 128.117.32.140;
   next-server 128.117.32.210;
   filename "/jp/kickstart/";
}
```
Create a link in /jp/kickstart. There are currently two possibilities. Link to kickstart-autopartition if you want kickstart to do all of the disk partitioning. This is the preferred link if you can possibly arrange it. Or create a link to kickstart-manualpartition if you want to go in and create your own partitions as part of the kickstart install. For example:
```
cd /jp/kickstart
ln -s 128.117.32.140-kickstart kickstart-autopartition
```
Create a directory for the machine in acd:/redhat/machines. Within that directory you can place files that are asked for by acd:/redhat/61/kickstart.postinstall.sh. For example, we put the IDL license file in acd:/redhat/machines/babbage.acd.ucar.edu/rsi/license.dat. User logins go in acd:/redhat/machines/babbage.acd.ucar.edu/user/. They are shellscripts which in turn invoke "useradd" to install the account. The encrypted password follows the -p flag and can be obtained from the user's current account on the machine or from another source. Currently this directory contains these files (keeping in mind this web page may be far older than the kickstart.postinstall.sh script which determines what files go here):
- RSI IDL license goes in acd:/redhat/machines/MACHINENAME/rsi/license.dat
- XF86Config file goes in acd:/redhat/machines/MACHINENAME/XF86Config. This XF86Config file is used instead of any file created by the Redhat kickstart install if it exists. This can preserve a lot of work if we've spent some time creating an XF86Config file for a particular machine. If it doesn't exist, in all liklihood, you'll have to re-run "sudo Xconfigurator" when a kickstart install is complete. If you do that and X-Windows works, copy that resulting XF86Config file to acd:/redhat/machines...
- The MIGS nrnet file goes in acd:/redhat/machines/MACHINENAME/migs/nrnet
- The name of the home diretory goes in acd:/redhat/machines/MACHINENAME/HOMEDIR. For example if HOMEDIR contains a line "/jw" then the home directory is renamed from /home to /jw by the kickstart.postinstall.sh script.
- User install scripts go into acd:/redhat/machines/MACHINENAME/users. The script for John Doe for instance is named "doe" and looks like:
```
useradd -p 'UX/tfb4Zh3Xqg' -u 987 -g 1001 -f -1 -G 1001 -c "John Doe" -d /home/doe \
-s /bin/ksh doe
```

Some notes and the future...

Some notes that I've found on kickstart with Redhat 6.1...

The rootpw -iscrypted option doesn't work
Currently the /kickstart directory from which kickstart files are read must be on the same server (as an exported NSF directory) as the DHCP server. Not sure whether this is a DHCP problem or a kickstart problem. The DHCP option in /etc/dhcpd "next-server 128.117.32.211;" seems to be ignored.
As part of the user login installation it would be nice to automate the creation of a .netscape directory for the user which would set them up automatically to use IMAP email from ACD, set the default home page, etc.
A failure of kickstart can be hard to diagnose because python script error messages just get dumped randomly on the screen along with Redhat graphics. If you pay careful attention, however, it's usually possible to figure out where the problem was. Changes to the kickstart files should be done cautiously and backing up working versions when possible.
It would be nice to incorporate StarOffice or WordPerfect into this scheme.