Automated generation of installed packages list? (RHEL5)

[John Summerfield]

JB Segal wrote:
> A somewhat more than cursory glance at the archives doesn't show the 
> answer to this...
> At the end of a manually-configured install, where I spent a reasonable 
> amount of time
> going through the available packages, picking those I wanted, and those 
> I didn't, the only
> evidence of this left in the anaconda-ks.cfg is the wholly-insubstantial 
> lines
> %packages
> @editors
> 
> and that's IT.

I installed a clone. I don't recall doing much package selection as I 
wanted to replicate my package selection from my nahant-clone out of 
FC3. My list looks better than my list:

%packages
@admin-tools
@base
@base-x
@core
@dialup
@dns-server
@editors
@ftp-server
@games
@gnome-desktop
@graphical-internet
@graphics
@java
@kde-desktop
@legacy-network-server
@mail-server
@network-server
@news-server
@office
@printing
@server-cfg
@smb-server
@sound-and-video
@text-internet
@web-server

You can patch your list with
   rpm --qa >>anaconda-ks.cfg
similar to Jason's suggestion. It's not as nice as Anaconda's doing it 
right, but it should be a satisfactory workaround while RH sorts out the 
bug report you're about to file.


For anyone who's intesteded, the Summerfield technique of "upgrading" 
the cross-breed involved
1. Preparing a package list on nahant-clone with
	"rpm -qa --qf '%{name}\n' >packages"
2. Installing Tikanga-clone.
3. Configuring yum to install from the install source any other likely 
sources of packages such as atrpms.
4. Copying the package list
5. A loop like this:
    cat packages | while read p ; do yum -y install ${p};done
which ran for quite some time and, to my delight, picked up such 
essentials as PINE.
6. Cloning users and groups from nahant-clone.
7. Copying /home


> 
> A) Would anyone like to guess whether this is a bug, a design lacuna, or 
> a 'feature'?
> B) Is there any way to generate an appropriate ks.cfg based upon this 
> system?
> 
> While it seems that the KS docs have been revised and updated for RHEL5, 
> at this hour on
> a Sunday, I'm not managing to find anything about reverse-engineering a 
> package list, nor
> anything about why I should ever NEED to do that.




-- 

Cheers
John

-- spambait
1aaaaaaa at coco.merseine.nu  Z1aaaaaaa at coco.merseine.nu

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