Static IP on Kickstart

[Daniel Theisen]

Hello all,
I've been struggling with an issue with my kickstart configuration for a while now. 

My current installation procedure:
  1. Insert kickstart CD into server and boot
  2. Select which kickstart to config from menu
  3. Server grabs a DHCP address off a local LAN, gets install data off of a local mirror
  4. Coffee while it installs
  5. Server reboots
  6. Log in and manually run network configuration script (written in %post section) to configure new static IP

What I would like to do is move step 6 to after step 4. I want to be able to run some kind of network installation at the very end of the install process, but before the first reboot. 

Our current situation is this. We do server installs on a daily basis, when we kickstart a machine, we plug it into our office VLAN and boot it. It then grabs a DHCP address from our office router and proceeds with a network installation.

Setting a static IP at the beginning of the install is not an option, because we have many different VLAN's for each of our subnets. Some of the VLAN's are offsite and going to our othr site to install a server is not ideal.

Static DHCP is also not an option for multiple reasons. Firtly, we have over 1000 servers already configured with static IP addresses. Although there's no conflict issues, we'd just like to keep IP addresses purely static for consistancy reasons. Secondly, there's the previous VLAN issue. Finally, there's the issue that we have some servers with 20+ IP addresses.

Baasically, it'd just be very nice to be able to configure a static IP address on a server during the actual install process.

Here is my current kickstart script:

  auth  --useshadow  --enablemd5 
  bootloader --location=mbr
  zerombr
  clearpart --all --initlabel 
  text
  firewall --enabled --port=22:tcp
  firstboot --disable
  keyboard us
  lang en_US
  logging --level=info
  url --url=http://mirror.nexcess.net/CentOS/5.5/os/x86_64/
  reboot --eject
  rootpw --iscrypted xx
  selinux --enforcing
  skipx
  timezone --isUtc America/Detroit
  install

  part /boot --bytes-per-inode=4096 --fstype="ext3" --size=512 --ondisk=sda
  part swap --bytes-per-inode=4096 --fstype="swap" --size=2048 --ondisk=sda
  part / --bytes-per-inode=4096 --fstype="ext3" --grow --size=1 --ondisk=sda
  part /backup --bytes-per-inode=4096 --fstype="ext3" --grow --size=1 --ondisk=sdb

  network --bootproto=dhcp --device=eth0

  %packages --nobase
  @core
  system-config-network-tui

  %post
  echo "nameserver 4.2.2.1" > /etc/resolv.conf
  echo "nameserver 8.8.8.8" >> /etc/resolv.conf

  # write netconfig script
  cat << EOF > /bin/netconfig 
  #!/bin/bash
  # check if user is root
  if [[ \$EUID -ne 0 ]]; then
      echo "This script must be run as root" 1>&2
      exit 1
  fi
  # run system-config-network-tui
  /usr/sbin/system-config-network-tui
  # set variables
  eth0f="/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0"
  eth1f="/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1"
  netcfg="/etc/sysconfig/network"
  # turn on eth1 if it has an address, remove gateway.. shouldn't be set here
  # anyways
  if [ -f "\$eth1f" ]; then
      if grep -q "IPADDR" \$eth1f; then
          sed -i 's/ONBOOT=no/ONBOOT=yes/' \$eth1f
          sed -i '/^GATEWAY/d' \$eth1f
          sed -i '/^HOTPLUG/d' \$eth1f
      fi
  fi
  # move gateway from ifcfg-eth0 to /etc/sysconfig/network
  if [ -f "\$eth0f" ]; then
      e0gw=\$(grep "GATEWAY" \$eth0f)
      sed -i '/^GATEWAY/d' \$eth0f
      # check to see if the gateway is already set. if it is, delete it first
      if ! grep -q "GATEWAY" /etc/sysconfig/network; then
          echo \$e0gw >> \$netcfg
      else
          sed -i '/^GATEWAY/d' \$netcfg
          echo \$e0gw >> \$netcfg
      fi
  fi
  EOF
  chmod +x /bin/netconfig

At the moment, I have a not-so-elegant script written to the server to be run manually after install. I began using system-config-network-tui vanilla, but realized it had some differences from the network configuration tool in anaconda (net.c?) I tried my best to correct those differences with my netconfig script. I've already tried running system-config-network-tui in the %post section, but it doesn't seem to work.

If anyone has had experience in dealing with a scenario such as this, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Daniel Theisen <dtheisen at nexcess.net>