[et-mgmt-tools] Cobbler + %pre and %post in kickstart

[Michael DeHaan]

Mike M wrote:
> post-install things like
> installing server-specific non-Red Hat packages

Depends on what OS you have.

RHEL-5 and FC-6 debued the usage of the "repo" command in kickstart, 
which allows you to attach, in a kickstart, additional yum repositories 
to install things from.
These can be yum repositories you maintain yourself (say you had a 
directory full of RPMs in /var/www/html/myrepo and ran createrepo from 
the yum-utils package on that directory to make it a yum repository), or 
you have yum repositories like Fedora Extras (FC6 and before), Updates, 
EPEL, Centos Extras, 3rd party repos, etc.   If you are using a distro 
that supports "repo", this is the best way to install non-vendor 
packages in kickstart, because you can just mention them directly in the 
%packages section.

The cool thing about the "repo" directive is that you can also add an 
updates repository to the repo list, so that packages can be already up 
to date right after install, without having to invoke "yum update -y".

Cobbler can even help you create a local mirror of these various 
external yum repositories and automatically associate them with your 
cobbler profiles:  http://cobbler.et.redhat.com/cobbler-repos.php

If you are using a version of Anaconda that doesn't support the "repo" 
command (like RHEL4), one thing you can do is just set up an external 
install sourcein %post and do things there, just do wgets of the RPMs 
and install them in %post, or rely on a configuration management system 
to do things once the system boots.