CentOS Kickstart with local CDROM media and a “http config file”

At our NYC office, I have a PXE/Kickstart system setup. All I need to do is boot to PXE, and I can install CentOS with very little intervention. I have to choose Server vs Desktop (each choice points to a different http hosted kickstart cfg file.) and I have to setup my partitons how I want them.

Recently I was tasked to setup a new office in LA. I had taken a CentOS iso with me, but I wanted to use the standard config file (hosted over http) at the central office. Basically I wanted to use the local bits with a remote config file. I learned a couple fo things going through this exercise.

  1. It is not easy to serach for KickStart config file examples becasue KickStart is the name of the process and the name of the config file.
  2. When booting from an ISO, if you want use local bits with a remote KickStart config file, the command is
    • linux ks=http://url.server.com/
    • The kickstart file must have the directive: cdrom
    • you can not have both “url” and “cdrom” in the same file. It will use the first one it finds (or last, I do not remember which)
  3. You can not combine both command line parameters and a kickstart file – the KickStart file overrides. For example I used:
    • linux ks=http://url.server.com/ks.cfg method=cdrom and I did not have “cdrom” in the config file. The installer prompted me for media type.

The only way I could use local bits with a KickStart file, was to specify “cdrom” in the config file. Which means I had to have yet another option/config file= dekstop,server, server-cdrom.

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