Automated kickstart of remote machine

Klaus Steden klaus.steden at thomson.net
Sat Jun 11 02:54:48 UTC 2005


> Hello, all -
> 
> I've set up a small lab in VMWare to experiment with upgrading an older
> machine.  I'd like to come up with a process to completely re-install
> RHEL4 on the machine.  I'm trying to pull all this off in a little lab
> before I go for the big money - a server that is about 1200 miles away
> from me.
> 
> I'm able to do a kickstart install off of a CD, or a disk - that's cake.
>  However, I don't know much about doing a kickstart on a remote machine,
> a machine I will have no physical access to.  All I can do (and
> hopefully after the kickstart will still be able to) is SSH to the
> machine as it stands.
> 
> I guess what I'm asking here is what are my options in an effort to
> kickstart this machine remotely?  Is there a process which I can hack at
> grub a little bit to load some additional kickstart paramaters next time
> it boots, and at that time, it would begin the kickstart?  Is that how
> it's done in this situation?
> 
You -may- be able to do something like that if you can get a DHCP server up on
the same segment, and then configure it, or preconfigure your install media,
to find a kickstart file that way.

There's some discussion of it in the anaconda docs, although I've never
investigated it.

hth,
Klaus




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