User's Manual
Chapter 6. Red Hat Network Website 93
based upon the distribution to be kickstarted. It should look something like, "auto-kickstart-ks-rhel-
i386-as-3". Then, strip everything preceding the "ks" to derive the boot image. For instance, in the
above example, you would put "ks-rhel-i386-as-3" in the Autokickstart RPM field.
Then select the matching distribution from the Base Channel and Installer Generation dropdown
menus, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS (v.3 for x86) and Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 3, respectively. When finished, click the Create button.
6.4.10.10. Kickstart
File Preservation —
Collects lists of files to be protected and re-deployed on systems during kickstart. For instance, if you
have many custom configuration files located on a system to be kickstarted, you can enter them here
quickly as a list and then associate that list with the kickstart profile to be used.
To use this feature, click the create new file preservation list link at the top and enter a relevant label
and all files and directories to preserved on the resulting page. Make sure you enter absolute paths to
all files and directories. Then click Create List.
Important
Although file preservation is useful, it does have limitations. First, each list is limited to a total size of
1 MB. Further, special devices like /dev/hda1 and /dev/sda1 are not supported. Finally, only actual
file and directory names may be entered. No regular-expression wildcards can be included.
When finished, you may include the file preservation list in the kickstart profile to be used on systems
containing those files. Refer to Section 6.4.10.3 Creating Kickstarts for precise steps.
6.4.10.11. Building Bootable Kickstart ISOs
While you can schedule a registered system to be kickstarted to a new operating system and package
profile, it is also useful to be able to kickstart a system that is not registered with RHN, or does not
yet have an operating system installed. One common method of doing this is to create a bootable CD-
ROM that is inserted into the target system. When the system is rebooted, it boots from the CD-ROM,
loads the kickstart configuration from the RHN Servers or your Satellite, and proceeds to install Red
Hat Enterprise Linux according to the kickstart profile you have created.
To do this, copy the contents of /isolinux from the first CD-ROM of the target distribution. Then
edit the isolinux.cfg file to default to ’ks’. Change the ’ks’ section to look like this:
label ks
kernel vmlinuz
append text ks={url} initrd=initrd.img lang= devfs=nomount ramdisk_size=16438 \
{ksdevice}
The URL can be obtained from the Kickstart Details page. It will look something like this:
http://my.sat.server/kickstart/ks/org/1271287x2c4682f33b87ed1d4dbea8/label/my-rhel3-as-ks
IP addressed-based kickstart URLs will look something like this:
http://my.sat.server/kickstart/ks/mode/ip_range
The kickstart distribution selected by the IP range should match the distribution you are building from,
or errors will occur. {ksdevice} is optional, but looks like: