kickstart configuration file testers?

[Panu Matilainen]

On Thu, 2005-11-24 at 13:45 -0500, Klaus Steden wrote:
> > 
> > Hello!
> > 
> > Does anyone know of a good way (or better yet, a tool!) to test kickstart 
> > configuration files without having to reboot and rebuild a machine?  It's 
> > extraordinarily time consuming to reboot a machine with a kickstart 
> > configuration file that may not work.
> > 
> I don't know about a consistency-checker if such a thing exists (wouldn't mind
> having it, if it did) but I use VMware to check my kickstarts.
> 
> Sure, it's the whole install process, but I can run it from my workstation
> without rebooting, I don't need hard media, etc.

VMware is a real time (and sanity :) saver. Depends on what you do with
the kickstart, but if you have a very complex %post section you can make
a small "first stage" %post that downloads the real part and then starts
it. That way you can take a snapshot right before the %post starts,
tweak the real %post as much as you like and just revert back to the
snapshot, avoiding the lengthy installation part completely.

> It's not without limitations - don't expect accelerated 3D drivers to do
> anything - but it cut my testing iterations from 40-60 minutes + the cost of
> media to 20 minutes.
> 
> It's a very worthwhile investment, IMHO.

Yup, for pretty much all sorts of testing work VMware is worth every
penny. You'll save on media costs because all you need is .iso image(s)
and the snapshotting (especially in 5.5) has made things that I wouldn't
even have dreamed about earlier possible and even easy because the test
cycle became so short it doesn't really matter anymore.

	- Panu -