88 Chapter 6. Red Hat Network Website
6.4.10.1. Kickstart Prerequisites
Although Red Hat Network has taken great pains to ease the provisioning of systems, some prepara-
tion is still required for your infrastructure to handle kickstarts. For instance, before creating kickstart
profiles, you may consider:
• A DHCP server is not required for kickstarting, but it can make things easier. If you are using static
IP addresses, you should select static IP while developing your kickstart profile.
• An FTP server can be used in place of hosting the kickstart distribution trees via HTTP.
• If conducting a bare metal kickstart, you should 1)Configure DHCP to assign required networking
parameters and the bootloader program location. 2)Specify within the bootloader configuration file
the kernel to be used and appropriate kernel options.
For a decription of the innerworkings of the kickstart process, refer to Section 6.4.10.2 Kickstart
Explained.
6.4.10.2. Kickstart Explained
When a machine is to receive a network-based kickstart, the following events must occur in this order:
1. After being placed on the network and turned on, the machine’s PXE logic broadcasts its MAC
address and a request to be discovered.
2. If a static IP address is not being used, the DHCP server recognizes the discovery request and
extends an offer of network information needed for the new machine to boot. This includes an
IP address, the default gateway to be used, the netmask of the network, the IP address of the
TFTP or HTTP server holding the bootloader program, and the full path and filename of that
program (relative to the server’s root).
3. The machine applies thenetworking information and initiates asession with theserver to request
the bootloader program.
4. The bootloader, once loaded, searches for its configuration file on the server from which it was
itself loaded. This file dictates which kernel and kernel options, such as the initial RAM disk
(initrd) image, should be executed on the booting machine. Assuming the bootloader program is
SYSLINUX, this file will be located in the pxelinux.cfg directory on the server and named
the hexadecimal equivalent of the new machine’s IP address. For example, a bootloader config-
uration file for Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 2.1 should contain:
port 0
prompt 0
timeout 1
default My_Label
label My_Label
kernel vmlinuz
append ks=http://myrhnsatellite/ initrd=initrd.img network apic
5. The machine accepts and uncompresses the init image and kernel, boots the kernel, and initiates
a kickstart installation with the options supplied in the bootloader configuration file, including
the server containing the kickstart configuration file.
6. This kickstart configuration file in turn directs the machine to the location of the installation
files.
7. The new machine is built based upon the parameters established within the kickstart configura-
tion file.
