Obscure errors configuring software in Kickstart %POST script

[Michael DeHaan]

Robert J Lee wrote:
> Sorry if this is not strictly relevant, but I wanted to give this back
> to the community in some form.
>
> Since I've spent some time working this out, it might be useful to note
> that the permissions on the device files /dev/* are different between
> running an install and running a live system.
>
> If, for instance, you try to create a Postgresql database on Red Hat
> Enterprise 5 using "service postgres start" in a kickstart script, then
> it will create the pg_log directory but then fail. (Of course, the
> pg_log directory is left there so initdb will then refuse to create the
> database again, but that's by the by).
>
> The solution to this is to ensure that users other than root have
> whatever read/write access they need to the device files they are using.
>
> Many servers are shipped with databases and software pre-installed, and
> so it wouldn't surprise me if this affected other major software
> packages, any yet I couldn't find anything on the issue with a Google
> search.
>
> Maybe people are giving up and doing manual installs, or cloning disk
> images or something? Perhaps this could be made more prominent in the
> documentation?
>
> Anyway, I hope that helps someone. Getting an obscure error like
> "/dev/null: Permission denied" (when it was actually another device file
> causing the problem) isn't too easy to figure out.
>
> Robert J. Lee
>
>   

Perhaps you should be configuring Postgres at firstboot, or otherwise 
just creating an init script
that is installed in %post and then disables itself?

Setting up databases in %post seems a bit heavy to me.

--Michael