kickstart package installation issue

[Phil Meyer]

Lonni J Friedman wrote:
> Greetings,
> I've got a bunch of kickstart scripts that I use for network based
> installations of FC (and RHEL too).  One thing that I've noticed is
> that for x86_64 installations, where RPMs are provided for both x86_64
> and i386 (32bit compatibilty), the 32bit versions just about never get
> installed.
>
> I know that I can expliclty specify individual RPM/package names in
> the %packages section, however I can't find any information on how to
> specify arch.
>
> Is there a way of explicitly specifying the i386 version of the RPM
> should be installed along with the x86_64 when doing a kickstart based
> installation?
>
> thanks!
>
The syntax is ok for:
package.i386

There have been a few bugs in anaconda versions that forced this 
method.  Packages without specifying the arch were just ignored.  The 
version of anaconda released on the FC4 CDs had this problem.

For best flexibility, you may wish to determine the arch in part of the 
preinstall phase, and pass it to a program that can dynamically create 
the ks.cfg file for you -- I like a cgi script executed on a web server 
for this.  Then each of the packages in your list could append the 
correct arch at run time.

 From the Boot image CD Prompt:

linux ks=http://myserver/cgi-bin/my.cgi?ARCH=x86_64

For example.

In the my.cgi program:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use CGI;
use Socket;
use strict;

...

my $arch = $q->param('ARCH') || "i386";
...

print "#Package install information
\%packages
@ base
-man.$arch
-man-pages.noarch
-rhnlib.noarch
e2fsprogs.$arch
sharutils.$arch
ntp.$arch
\n";

Hope this helps.