Kickstart Infrastructure SOP

Kickstart scripts provide our install infrastructure. We have a plethora of different kickstarts to best match the system you are trying to install.

Contact Information

Owner

Fedora Infrastructure Team

Contact

#fedora-admin, sysadmin-main

Location

Everywhere we have machines.

Servers

batcave01 (stores kickstarts and install media)

Purpose

Provides our install infrastructure

Introduction

Our kickstart infrastructure lives on batcave01. All install media and kickstart scripts are located on batcave01. Because the RHEL binaries are not public we have these bits blocked. You can add needed IPs to (from batcave01):

ansible/roles/batcave/files/allows

Physical Machine (kvm virthost)

PXE Booting: If PXE booting just follow the prompt after doing the pxe boot (most hosts will pxeboot via console hitting f12).

Prep

This only works on an already booted box, many boxes at our colocations may have to be rebuilt by the people in those locations first. Also make sure the IP you are about to boot to install from is allowed to our IP restricted infrastructure.fedoraproject.org as noted above (in Introduction).

Download the vmlinuz and initrd images.

For a rhel6 install:

wget https://infrastructure.fedoraproject.org/repo/rhel/RHEL6-x86_64/images/pxeboot/vmlinuz \
    -O /boot/vmlinuz-install
wget https://infrastructure.fedoraproject.org/repo/rhel/RHEL6-x86_64/images/pxeboot/initrd.img \
    -O /boot/initrd-install.img

grubby --add-kernel=/boot/vmlinuz-install \
       --args="ks=https://infrastructure.fedoraproject.org/repo/rhel/ks/hardware-rhel-6-nohd \
       repo=https://infrastructure.fedoraproject.org/repo/rhel/RHEL6-x86_64/ \
       ksdevice=link ip=$IP gateway=$GATEWAY netmask=$NETMASK dns=$DNS" \
       --title="install el6" --initrd=/boot/initrd-install.img

For a rhel7 install:

wget https://infrastructure.fedoraproject.org/repo/rhel/RHEL7-x86_64/images/pxeboot/vmlinuz -O /boot/vmlinuz-install
wget https://infrastructure.fedoraproject.org/repo/rhel/RHEL7-x86_64/images/pxeboot/initrd.img -O /boot/initrd-install.img

For iad2 hosts:

grubby --add-kernel=/boot/vmlinuz-install \
       --args="ks=http://10.5.126.23/repo/rhel/ks/hardware-rhel-7-nohd \
       repo=http://10.5.126.23/repo/rhel/RHEL7-x86_64/ \
       net.ifnames=0 biosdevname=0 bridge=br0:eth0 ksdevice=br0 \
       ip={{ br0_ip }}::{{ gw }}:{{ nm }}:{{ hostname }}:br0:none" \
       --title="install el7" --initrd=/boot/initrd-install.img

(You will need to setup the br1 device if any after install)

For non iad2 hosts:

grubby --add-kernel=/boot/vmlinuz-install \
       --args="ks=https://infrastructure.fedoraproject.org/repo/rhel/ks/hardware-rhel-7-ext \
       repo=https://infrastructure.fedoraproject.org/repo/rhel/RHEL7-x86_64/ \
       net.ifnames=0 biosdevname=0 bridge=br0:eth0 ksdevice=br0 \
       ip={{ br0_ip }}::{{ gw }}:{{ nm }}:{{ hostname }}:br0:none" \
       --title="install el7" --initrd=/boot/initrd-install.img

Fill in the br0 ip, gateway, etc

The default here is to use the hardware-rhel-7-nohd config which requires you to connect via VNC to the box and configure its drives. If this is a new machine or you are fine with blowing everything away, you can instead use https://infrastructure.fedoraproject.org/rhel/ks/hardware-rhel-6-minimal as your kickstart

If you know the number of hard drives the system has there are other kickstarts which can be used.

2 disk system

ks=https://infrastructure.fedoraproject.org/repo/rhel/ks/hardware-rhel-7-02disk

or external

ks=https://infrastructure.fedoraproject.org/repo/rhel/ks/hardware-rhel-7-02disk-ext

4 disk system

ks=https://infrastructure.fedoraproject.org/repo/rhel/ks/hardware-rhel-7-04disk

or external

ks=https://infrastructure.fedoraproject.org/repo/rhel/ks/hardware-rhel-7-04disk-ext

6 disk system

ks=https://infrastructure.fedoraproject.org/repo/rhel/ks/hardware-rhel-7-06disk

or external

ks=https://infrastructure.fedoraproject.org/repo/rhel/ks/hardware-rhel-7-06disk-ext

8 disk system

ks=https://infrastructure.fedoraproject.org/repo/rhel/ks/hardware-rhel-7-08disk

or external

ks=https://infrastructure.fedoraproject.org/repo/rhel/ks/hardware-rhel-7-08disk-ext

10 disk system

ks=https://infrastructure.fedoraproject.org/repo/rhel/ks/hardware-rhel-7-10disk

or external

ks=https://infrastructure.fedoraproject.org/repo/rhel/ks/hardware-rhel-7-10disk-ext

Double and triple check your configuration settings (On RHEL-6 cat /boot/grub/menu.lst and on RHEL-7 cat /boot/grub2/grub.cfg), especially your IP information. In places like ServerBeach not all hosts have the same netmask or gateway. Once everything you are ready to run the commands to get it set up to boot next boot.

RHEL-6:

echo "savedefault --default=0 --once" | grub --batch
shutdown -r now

RHEL-7:

grub2-reboot 0
shutdown -r now

Installation

Once the box logs you out, start pinging the IP address. It will disappear and come back. Once you can ping it again, try to open up a VNC session. It can take a couple of minutes after the box is back up for it to actually allow vnc sessions. The VNC password is in the kickstart script on batcave01:

grep vnc /mnt/fedora/app/fi-repo/rhel/ks/hardware-rhel-7-nohd

vncviewer $IP:1

If using the standard kickstart script, one can watch as the install completes itself, there should be no need to do anything. If using the hardware-rhel-6-nohd script, one will need to configure the drives. The password is in the kickstart file in the kickstart repo.

Post Install

Run ansible on the box asap to set root passwords and other security features. Don’t leave a newly installed box sitting around.

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