Chap 3 Installation

Kickstart Kickstart is Red Hat’s program that completely or partially automates the same installation and post-installation on one or more machines. To use, create a single file (ks.cfg) that answers all questions that are normally asked during an installation. Anaconda then refers to this file instead of asking you questions.

Kickstart cont System-config-kickstart utility is part of the system-config-kickstart package that you can install using yum. This can be used to create the installation script.

parted parted reports on and manipulates disk partitions from the command line. /sbin/parted /dev/hda print – uses the print command to display info about the partitions on the /dev/hda drive. Includes partition number, start location, end location, size, type (primary, ext, or logical), file system, flags that are turned on (boot, swap, raid, lvm)

Figure 3-19 The primary and extended partitions from the example

parted Note that you cannot make changes to an extended partition without affecting all logical partitions within it. Parted can also be used to change disk layout. Be extremely careful – changing the partition table on a disk can destroy information.

parted To make changes to partitions, /sbin/parted /dev/hdb (name of device) –h gives list of help command –p print displays current partition information –Quit - exits Parted will not allow you to set up overlapping partitions and will not allow you to create a partition at the beginning of a disk to avoid loss of data.

Parted guidelines Don’t delete or modify the partition that defines the extended partition unless you are willing to lose all data on all logical partitions within the extended. Put /boot at the beginning of the drive (partition 1) Easiest to use parted to create partitions and use mkfs amd mkswap to create the filesystem on the partitions.