kickstart vs. /etc/login.defs

[Tim Mooney]

In regard to: Re: kickstart vs. /etc/login.defs, Michael Hennebry said (at...:

> On Wed, 25 Jan 2012, root at nachtmaus.us wrote:
>
>> Firstly, for where to put the ks file, it would be easiest for you to 
>> remaster the boot CD, and put the ks file into the root directory of the CD, 
>> update the configuration for the CD's boot-loader to add something like 
>> "ks=cdrom:/fc14.ks", and then burn the resulting (modified) file-tree to a 
>> new CD disk

For a one-off install, in the absence of a provisioning environment like
cobbler, I personally think it's a lot easier to load the kickstart file
over the network.  Just do something like

- place your ks.cfg in a directory that is accessible via a URL
- tell anaconda to load the ks.cfg from the URL

 	ks=http://your.web.host.here/url/path/to/ks.cfg

This assumes that the client you're kickstarting can get a DHCP address.
If not, assuming you have an IP reserved for it, you can kickstart it
so DHCP is not required:

 	ks=http://your.web.host.here/url/path/to/ks.cfg \
 		ksdevice=eth0 ip=<your ipv4 address here> \
 		netmask=<your netmask here> \
 		gateway=<your gateway here> \
 		dns=dns_server1,dns_server2

Other useful parameters to anaconda include

 	debug
 	text
 	noipv6
 	syslog=<your syslog host here> loglevel=debug
 	vnc vncconnect=host:port vncpassword=<your password>


>> To get around the too early/to late of %pre and %post, you may want to add a 
>> custom RPM archive file to the CD, have it dump the files into the 
>> being-created system, and run a command as part of its installation 
>> procedure that causes the newly added files to be read. Then reference the 
>> new RPM archive in the packages section of your ks file.

I don't understand from the initial post what the actual goal is, so it's
hard to know what to suggest here.  Unless I missed it, the original issue
has something to do with uids in the 101-499 range, but I have no idea
what the actual problem is.

I will say that you can do a lot in %post using things like "wget" to
fetch a remote tarball or zip and then using the contents of that archive
to perform further actions.

Tim
-- 
Tim Mooney                                             Tim.Mooney at ndsu.edu
Enterprise Computing & Infrastructure                  701-231-1076 (Voice)
Room 242, IACC Building
North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58105-5164