Hi Hugh, We have many machines that we will be building, so we are hoping to automate the process of monitoring the status of the OS. Spawning a script and monitoring 'install.log' is an option. Another thought would be monitoring the anaconda.log. I notice the log prints the following.... anaconda.log:21:22:31 INFO : moving (1) to step partitionobjinit anaconda.log:21:22:32 INFO : moving (1) to step autopartitionexecute anaconda.log:21:22:32 INFO : moving (1) to step partitiondone anaconda.log:21:22:32 INFO : moving (1) to step bootloadersetup anaconda.log:21:22:32 INFO : moving (1) to step networkdevicecheck anaconda.log:21:22:32 INFO : moving (1) to step reposetup anaconda.log:21:22:34 INFO : moving (1) to step basepkgsel anaconda.log:21:22:35 INFO : moving (1) to step postselection anaconda.log:21:22:44 INFO : moving (1) to step install anaconda.log:21:22:44 INFO : moving (1) to step enablefilesystems anaconda.log:21:23:48 INFO : moving (1) to step migratefilesystems anaconda.log:21:23:48 INFO : moving (1) to step setuptime anaconda.log:21:23:49 INFO : moving (1) to step preinstallconfig anaconda.log:21:23:49 INFO : moving (1) to step installpackages anaconda.log:21:25:57 INFO : moving (1) to step postinstallconfig anaconda.log:21:25:57 INFO : moving (1) to step writeconfig anaconda.log:21:25:57 INFO : moving (1) to step firstboot anaconda.log:21:25:57 INFO : moving (1) to step instbootloader anaconda.log:21:25:59 INFO : moving (1) to step writeksconfig anaconda.log:21:25:59 INFO : moving (1) to step writeregkey anaconda.log:21:25:59 INFO : moving (1) to step setfilecon anaconda.log:21:25:59 INFO : moving (1) to step copylogs It looks like if I monitor these steps then I might be able to get a better estimate of the installation progress. What do you think? Any thought? Thanks, David <div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 8:01 PM, Hugh Brown <<a href="mailto:hbrown@divms.uiowa.edu">hbrown@divms.uiowa.edu</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div><div></div><div class="h5"> On 05/03/2011 04:34 PM, Chun Tat David Chu wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> Hi All, I am hoping to run a python script in the background during %pre to monitor the kickstart install status. My script will periodically send status to a server somewhere within LAN and report the current installation status. Running a python script in %pre and sending status to a remote server is the easy part but I am not sure what to monitor to retrieve the kickstart install status. One thought I have is to monitor the /mnt/sysimage/root/install.log and compare the number of packages installed and the number of packages specified in the ks.cfg and get a rough estimate of the kickstart install status. I am not sure if this is a correct way to do or there's a better to do so. Please let me know if you've any suggestion or thought. Thanks! - David </blockquote> </div></div> My memory says that the install.log is actually in /tmp/install.log. After the installation is finished it is copied to /mnt/sysimage/root/install.log. For fedora systems, I enabled sshd and require a password: sshpw --username=root XXXXXXXX --plaintext If I want to check status, I ssh in and look. If I don't, there's a script that will email me when it has finished. On RH5 systems, I enabled vnc and would use vncviewer to connect and check progress. Otherwise, watching the number of packages installed in install.log works. Hugh<div><div></div><div class="h5"> _______________________________________________ Kickstart-list mailing list <a href="mailto:Kickstart-list@redhat.com" target="_blank">Kickstart-list@redhat.com</a> <a href="https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/kickstart-list" target="_blank">https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/kickstart-list</a> </div></div></blockquote></div>